


Thirteenth Moon

by cyranonic



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassination Attempt(s), Childhood Sweethearts but make it sad, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor Mercedes von Martritz/Dedue Molinaro, Political Intrigue, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:22:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28738695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyranonic/pseuds/cyranonic
Summary: It is the eve of political transformation. As the first elections for the Grand Assembly of Fódlan quickly approach, King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd faces the disapproval of his own court, as well as the threat of a mysterious masked assassin. Felix strives to the defend the king, but where Dimitri is concerned, he has a secret.In fact, secrets and silences are the currency with which Fhirdiad was built.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 170
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter: poisoning, brief emetophobia, panic attacks

_“Yf they say the mone is blewe_

_We must beleve that it is true_

_Admittynge their interpretacion.”_

_\--Rede me and be nott wrothe, for I say no thynge but trothe_

The irony was that he had never had any trouble sleeping during the war.

Felix Hugo Fraldarius the soldier had awoken each morning to the grim work of cutting down old friends and faceless soldiers alike and then washed the blood from his clothes and slept.

There were, perhaps, a few exceptions.

The night before the Siege of Enbarr. He’d spent it reluctantly with Sylvain, drinking by a campfire so that he didn’t have to lie in silence and wonder what was coming next. The night after the Millennium Festival that had turned into a bloody, nightmarish parody of a class reunion. He’d spent that night watching the boar. It turned out that he didn’t sleep much either.

And the night after his father had died. He’d waited an hour sitting a vigil beside the body until he couldn’t take it anymore, gotten up, and gone to make the stupidest decision he’d ever made in his life. 

But His Grace, Duke Felix Hugo Fraldarius, was still awake even at the witching hour, before the sky turned grey with approaching dawn. It was too hot to sleep, and the air in his chambers was thick and close. The summer had been long and dry, baking Fhirdiad in sticky, endless heat for all of the Blue Sea Moon. Less than a month until the anniversary of their victory in Enbarr. One more month, and it would be five years of peace in Fódlan.

Peace, of course, was a relative term. Felix turned back to the pile of correspondence in front of him.

There was another letter from Margrave Gautier, reporting that last of the northern shires had polls ready to open.

There was a draft of a charter to be presented to the Privy Council, an important addition to the Act of Representation, which would eliminate the requirement for a member of the Grand Assembly to own land.

There were last minute preparations for the Unification Ball, only weeks away, where the capital would be filled with every powerful family in Fódlan, jockeying to maintain their influence.

There was yet another complaint from Count Gloucester, citing centuries old precedent that only Crested members of the peerage could gain full admittance into the Leicester Alliance and thus the Grand Assembly must follow the same rule.

This was the grim reality of Felix’s existence now. Three different legal systems had come crashing together when Fódlan was unified, and now Dimitri was attempting to invent an entirely new one on top of that. 

Distantly, thunder rumbled, but still no rain fell. Occasional heat lightning flickered in the darkness outside, but it would not break the pressure without a good storm.

Felix swept a lock of sweaty hair out of his eyes as he reread the most recent letter, a missive from Ashe, who was currently serving as their representative in Archbishop Byleth’s retinue at Garreg Mach. While Felix had been counting on the church’s support as they entered the tense final months before the polls were to officially open and Fódlan’s first openly elected Grand Assembly would assume power, the archbishop had been unfortunately distracted by a disturbing unearthing in the Hrym territory.

Felix skimmed Ashe’s letter, and then paused.

_‘Our spies in the Hresvelgian loyalist organizations have evidence that Madame Arnault intends to visit Fhirdiad personally.’_

The parchment crumpled slightly in his grip.

Madame Arnault. Once she’d been Dorothea, the star of the Mittelfrank Opera. Now every Adrestian radical in Fódlan knew her as Madame Arnault. She had been the only member of the Emperor’s infamous Black Eagle Strike Force to survive the war and ever since she had been a thorn in Felix’s side.

She moved constantly, her face and her name showing up at every pro-Hresvelgian uprising or Crest eradication protest from Enbarr to Fhirdiad. She was clever enough never to allow any evidence that she was the one organizing the violent clashes or the sabotages, but Felix was certain it was her.

And he held the dubious distinction of having once lost a dance competition to her when they were both at school.

If Dorothea Arnault was coming to Fhirdiad on the eve of what already promised to be major shift in power, that could only spell trouble. And Felix had worked too hard, worked for five years tirelessly, for her to destroy that now.

Ever since the war had ended, Felix had burned candles like this by night and fought fierce battles with the nobility by day. And he wasn’t good at it.

He lacked the rhetorical prowess of Margrave Edmund, who always managed to soothe Count Galatea’s paranoia about vengeful commoners claiming his dwindling wealth.

He lacked the established reputation of Margrave Gautier, who had managed to bring the western Faerghan lords to heel at last after the deposition of the Kleiman’s had sent them to the brink of another civil war.

He definitely lacked the subtlety of Count Varley, who had managed to rise from Minister of Religion to the de facto head of the former Adrestian faction through a combination of sycophantic compromise and careful quid pro quo.

No, the sorry truth of the matter was that he was still Felix the solider. Too volatile. Too angry. Better alone than with people. Intuitive enough to notice a problem, but hard-headed enough to just make it worse.

He’d spent his younger years agonizing over the fact that he was becoming nothing but a copy of his brother. Now he was twenty-eight years old and he was failing to become a copy of his father. He was the youngest member of the Privy Council, resented with varying degrees of openness for his influence over the king, and he never failed to feel like an idiot child stumbling into his father’s office.

It was perverse, but sometimes Felix missed the war. Perhaps that was why he dreamed of a battlefield every night.

Perhaps that was why he woke, sweating, heart pounding, unsure if the emotion he was feeling was terror or longing.

Felix rubbed his eyes. He needed to sleep. If he didn’t, he would probably snap at someone during the Privy Council session the next morning and cause yet another diplomatic incident.

He stood up, kicked off his boots and then glared at his bed with suspicion. His quarters in the palace of Fhirdiad were always luxurious. The mattress was plump, the sheets silky, the pillows over stuffed. In Fraldarius territory, he kept his quarters spare even as his household steward was driven to despair over the cold, cramped rooms he had chosen for himself.

Felix turned away from the bed and went to the window. The north wing of the palace looked out into a courtyard. Felix unlatched the window, hoping for a breath of air to disrupt the oppressive heat of his room.

Despite himself, he glanced across the courtyard, over the reflecting pool, to check the windows of the royal apartments.

No sign of a candle, he thought with relief. The king was asleep.

For the past few weeks, when Felix had gone to check Dimitri’s window, he’d seen the king’s shape pacing back and forth in front of a dim candle. For hours and hours, he’d watched him pacing.

It was the strain, Felix thought, of the upcoming election for the Grand Assembly. They had both spent the past five years striving for this, for a system where one man’s weakness could no longer wreak havoc on thousands more, for an end to the old broken ideals of a nobility meant to defend the commoners when it was clear that most of them chose to prey upon their own people instead.

But another part of Felix knew that was a lie. It was the part of Felix that could always spot a lie. He had seen through the lie of the Tragedy of Duscur and then he had seen through the lie that had been Dimitri in the years after.

And here he was again, watching from afar, staring at Dimitri from a distance, knowing something was wrong, something was very wrong, and doing nothing.

He was frozen, staring from across a cathedral, watching and knowing the truth and doing nothing. Just staring across at the dark shadow by the rubble, choking on his secrets.

Felix had a secret when it came to Dimitri.

He was hypocritical like that. After all this time, Felix was the one with a secret. It was such an old secret that sometimes he forgot that it was a secret and not simply a state of being.

Felix knew that he was in love with Dimitri. It was such a constant thing that he could not even tell when it had started. And he certainly knew that it could not be stopped.

For a while, he’d tried to pretend that it was _Dimitri_ who he loved, and not the boar. That the person he had always loved could not be the creature who slaughtered his own people in a frenzied rage. That the person with whom he’d shared his first, fumbling kisses with, was dead.

It had been a lie. Felix had watched Dimitri, not the boar, muttering and hateful and agonized in the cathedral. He had watched him and known with cold horror that he loved him still.

It was an involuntary love, the kind of mandated duty that he used to hate. It was also a completely voluntary love, chosen, accepted, and yet never, ever to be acted upon. An inert state. Not an action. A frozen love, a love preserved in amber, unchanging, unspoken, and never to be touched.

Because what would it accomplish to say I’ve loved you all my life and this is how I’ve acted? To confess, this is how I treat the people who I love?

It was an obnoxious problem, but Felix was tired of resenting it. Most days, he tried to put it out of his mind. 

Once, when he was a child, he and Dimitri had attempted to stay up all night at the new year, to greet the dawn. Felix had been barely eight years old and he had been yawning and mostly insensate before midnight. Dimitri had tried pinching himself, but even that wasn’t working for Felix. And so he’d put his bare feet into a drift of fresh snow, fallen asleep, and nearly been killed by Glenn when he awoke in the morning, shivering and with his legs wrapped in salved bandages.

Inaction had always been his curse.

At least for tonight, Dimitri was sleeping. If Felix could just get him to last a little longer, once the Grand Assembly was elected to carry at least part of the burden of kingship, then Dimitri would be safe.

Felix felt his fingers clench on the window ledge as he remembered the last time when things had been this bad. Three years ago, when House Kleiman had been deposed, Felix had known something was wrong.

Western Faerghus was close to open revolt, accusing the king of punishing his own people more harshly than he had the Adrestian territories which had fought against him. And Felix had gotten into a shouting match with Count Rowe and Dimitri had been forced to defend the words of his turbulent advisor.

And then someone had given Dimitri a glass of poisoned wine and he had nearly died the next week.

Felix had found him. He’d knocked at the door of the royal apartments, bringing news that Margrave Gautier had finally pacified Rowe. He’d knocked again. Dimitri had been on the floor, leaning against his bed. Felix had shaken him.

Shaken him and shaken him and shaken him. And there was vomit on his chin and he hadn’t woken and Felix had shaken him and shaken him.

A quiet scraping noise jolted Felix from the memory. He felt his face flush.

It was foolish to dwell on such things. Dimitri had lived. Felix had known something was wrong and done nothing again, but Dimitri had lived.

Felix turned away from the window, about to latch it again so that he could collapse into bed and try to drown out the churning of his thoughts with a few hours of sleep. What right did he have to sit up and worry when he was the sort of man who stood by uselessly and let Dimitri crumble for over ten years?

Once again, he heard a quiet scraping noise.

He spun around in time to catch a glimpse of something vanishing over the peak of the opposing roof. It was white, shining slightly against the darkness. A distant flicker of heat lightning caught it for an instant, startlingly pale, like a white grub buried in spoiled wheat.

A face, he realized. There was a man on the roof of the palace.

Felix grabbed his sword and ran from the room.

His pulse accelerated until it thundered in his ears. He felt the stone floors of the palace against his bare feet, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except getting to Dimitri, getting to him first this time.

He heard someone call out behind him, a guard or a servant, but he kept running. Let them chase him. He had to get there, he had to protect the king, he couldn’t—he couldn’t. Not again.

Not again.

And Dedue was in Duscur, which meant that Dimitri was alone in that wing of the palace, but for a few guards. Dedue and Mercedes had both gone to Duscur to negotiate the latest reparations and Dimitri was alone and there was someone on the roof.

Felix bust through a door, running at full tilt, and then drawing his blade. He reached the stairs and began taking them double, his bare feet making only a light sound against the marble. A few torches flickered in the sconces, casting a strange, long shadow over the wall as Felix ran past.

His own silhouette shifted and Felix felt his muscles clench involuntarily. He’d seen Dimitri stare into the darkness, flinch at silence, and mutter clipped retorts to the air for enough years to know that he mind could play tricks. In the blind near darkness now, it seemed more familiar.

Maybe he had gone mad as well, longing so sickeningly for bloodshed and war again that he saw enemies in the empty void.

He had almost convinced himself of that when he ran into the man with the cutlass.

A staircase made for a difficult battleground. Felix switched the blade of his saber to his left hand in time to block a heavy blow from above. His foot slipped back to the edge of a step, threatening to send him tumbling back to the landing below.

The assassin wore a dark hood, obscuring his face in shadow, but Felix caught a glimpse in the torchlight of his complexion. It was not that unnaturally pale face that he’d spotted on the roof.

As the steel clashed, Felix felt a faint mist of something liquid against his hand. He sniffed once. A poisoned blade. A single cut from a weapon like this could be deadly. Short and brutal, then, Felix thought.

He struck out with a series of fast, heavy blows, gaining a step as the assassin staggered under the onslaught. He twisted out of the way of a low jab, but kept his balance. Parrying with a strike at the assassin’s knees, he then feinted back before lunging forward, slamming the man’s body down onto the steps. As they crashed onto the stairs, Felix drove his saber up and under the man’s rib cage.

He heard a faint low grunt from the assassin as his lungs filled with blood, and then he stilled. Carefully, Felix shifted off of the body. His cuff was torn, the cutlass blade having come a hair’s breadth away from his skin. The front of his body was soaked in warm blood.

From behind him, Felix made out a shout from one of the guards. As they rounded the corner, Felix was prying the poisoned blade from the dead man’s hand and kicking it away.

“Poisoned,” Felix said through his frantic breaths. “Search the palace. There was another on the roof. I’ll protect the king.”

“Your Grace,” the guard panted, recognizing him, “shouldn’t you—?”

“I said I’ll protect the king,” Felix growled. “Go! Rouse the watch!”

He turned without waiting for a response and ran up the stairs. His fingers were slipping on the hilt of his saber and his knuckles ached with the force of his grip. The tendons in his arm protested slightly, but he didn’t care to loosen his fist.

When he reached the door of the royal apartments, brushing past the drowsy guard to pound on the door, he got no response.

“Key,” Felix barked. The guard stumbled backwards, momentarily going for her own blade before recognizing him.

“Key!” he demanded more forcefully. She handed it to him. “Stay at your post.”

He unlocked the door and slammed it behind him. The antechamber was dark, but Felix lit the oil lamp as quickly as his shaking, blood stained fingers allowed. He spent no time on checking the corners, beneath the tables or behind the screens. He ran for Dimitri’s bedchamber.

When he entered, the room was dark and silent. The great canopy bed was at the center, curtains drawn, no sound coming from it. A bit of distant lightning flickered through the window and, for a moment, the room was illuminated in stark black and white.

There was no sound from the canopy bed. Not a sound. Not even a startled breath or…

Felix rushed to the bed and ripped the curtains back, feeling desperately for the shape of a body in the darkness.

“Dimitri,” he whispered, gritting his teeth as he heard panic in his voice. “Dimitri, wake up, wake up, please, please, wake up—”

His hands met fabric and then flesh and then warmth. Warm and living skin and then finally the sound of Dimitri waking with a wordless gasp and fumbling for the candle.

Felix staggered back, trembling so badly that the sword nearly fell from his grasp. Dimitri was alive, warm and disoriented with his hair mussed from heavy sleep. As he kicked his way out of the covers, Felix saw that he wore only a nightshirt. The scarred, sunken lid where his eye had once been was uncovered, but he clapped a hand over it as though Felix had seen something indecent.

“Felix,” Dimitri said breathlessly, scrambling for something to cover the scars with. “What are you…? You’re injured!”

He swung his legs down and reached for the slick bloodstain still covering Felix’s middle.

“Not mine,” Felix said, his voice brittle. He was breathing so fast. He felt sick. His heart felt like it was working double and it made his knees oddly unstable. “Move, move! Away from the window!”

He grabbed Dimitri by the front of his nightshirt and dragged him into the corner, partially concealed from sight by a tapestry of Loog riding a gryphon that hung across the wall. Felix pressed his back against the stone. He worried that he might be sick. What was happening to him?

“Felix, what is going on?” Dimitri asked. His voice sounded oddly slurred. Felix looked at him. Dimitri was leaning against the wall, swaying slightly as he reached to inspect the blood of Felix’s shirt again. His brows were drawn in an expression of worry, lips pressed tight together and eye narrow with strain.

But he wasn’t right. He wasn’t right and Felix knew it. Felix always knew.

“You’ve been drugged,” Felix realized, turning to search the room for vials or cups. “You’re not yourself. Damn it, Dimitri, what did you take?”

“No,” Dimitri shook his head blurrily. “No, I didn’t—”

“A pinprick then,” Felix said, trying to stop himself from shaking as he grabbed Dimitri’s arm and pulled the sleeve back to search for needle marks. His finger’s dug into Dimitri’s forearm, hard enough that he saw Dimitri wince with the pain. He was leaving smudges of drying blood across Dimitri’s skin.

“Felix!” Dimitri said, louder this time, in the firm kingly tone he often used when he did not want to be questioned. “I’m alright. Felix, it’s okay, I’m alright.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Felix almost shouted, frustration turning his words into a petulant snarl. “You aren’t! You’ve been… you’ve taken something!”

“Felix, I took a medicine that the healers gave me. To help me sleep.”

Felix fell silent then.

He released his grip on Dimitri’s arm and stumbled back into the tapestry. He felt like his chest was tightening, like he couldn’t draw a breath. Had the blade nicked him after all? Was this the beginning stages of the venom working its way to stop his heart?

“Felix, look at me,” Dimitri said very gently. “Look at me. I’m here.”

Slowly, Felix focused his eyes on Dimitri. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, he was a sketch of himself, all looming frame and sweep of hair and his single piercing eye. Slowly, Felix felt his heart rate slowing. Dimitri was alive. He’d taken a sleeping draught. That made sense. Dimitri’s nightmares had been a frequent enough interruption during their days at Garreg Mach.

Felix just forgot sometimes, that Dimitri was mad. He still kept the nature of his condition very private. Although the people could accept a king who had abandoned them, even the professor had agreed that the nobles of Fódlan would likely not accept a king who sometimes spoke with the unquiet dead.

And why would he tell Felix such an intimate thing as taking a medicine to help him sleep when they were no longer friends, when they were barely more than colleagues?

Yes, of course, there was the matter of the secret. That Felix was in love with him. But that only added to the distance between them.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Dimitri said quietly after a few moments.

“Assassin on the stairs,” Felix said shortly, turning his face away again. His breathing came easier and he hated the way Dimitri was looking at him when he was _fine_. “Had a poisoned blade. I killed him. I spotted another on the roof.”

“You…” Dimitri began cautiously, as though the words he was about to say might make Felix strike him, “you saved my life.”

“There was another on the roof,” Felix hissed, pushing himself forward. He needed to search the room. He should check the other rooms, under the furniture, inside of the secret passageways he knew the palace had.

“Felix, I’m okay,” Dimitri repeated. He kept saying that. Felix had no idea why. “I know you… you haven’t killed anyone since the war, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Felix snapped, immediately on the defensive from the apparent accusation. Dimitri rubbed his eye, trying to banish the grogginess that the sleeping draught had left him with.

“I sometimes speak with other soldiers. Those who fought in the war. It helps. It helps them to confide in one another, I think, to—” Dimitri began.

“Enough,” Felix said with vehemence.

Dimitri fell silent.

“We need to search your rooms,” Felix finally said. “Get a weapon.”

Silently, Dimitri obeyed. He didn’t do much as Felix shoved aside furniture, drew back tapestries, forced his way behind a bookcase at one point. He simply waited, yawning periodically.

He didn’t care, Felix realized. He was just tired and mildly inconvenienced, but he didn’t care that someone had just tried to kill him.

Finally, when there were no more corners of the royal apartment to explore, Felix had to concede. Through the window, he could hear guards calling out to one another as they searched the grounds. The immediate threat was probably over.

But there had been another assassin. Felix was positive. There had been a white face, slipping beneath the peak of the roof. 

Dimitri sat back onto the side of his bed, sword lying carelessly beside him on the covers.

“What are you doing?” Felix asked furiously. Dimitri blinked up at him innocently. “Someone is trying to _kill_ you. It is less than a month until the votes are counted and Dorothea Arnault is coming to Fhirdiad and half of the nobility are fighting you tooth and claw to reinstate the ban on commoners in the Assembly and now someone! Is trying! To kill you!”

“Felix, I don’t want to argue with you,” Dimitri said quietly.

“I’m not—” Felix cut himself off with a wordless growl of frustration. “You’re being careless. You have to be on your guard. You act as though the kingdom will stop needing you once the Grand Assembly is instated when you know as well as I do that half of western Faerghus will defect in protest and most of southern Adrestia will rebel in revenge if you aren’t around.”

Dimitri’s expression darkened slightly.

“I cannot live constantly cowering every time someone attempts to kill me,” he said with a slightly hard smile. “But I will endeavor not to cause any undue instability.”

Felix glanced out of the window again. Guards moved around like faint shadows, black against black. The candle from his own window was still faintly burning.

He’d said something wrong, he realized. Yet again, whenever he and Dimitri attempted to talk about anything but treatises and chancery and ambassadors, he always said something that he didn’t fully mean. 

Why did it have to be so difficult to just explain? To admit that the thought of Dimitri dying was… it would be more than a simple annoyance to him. More than a political setback.

“Fine,” Felix finally relented. “Fine.”

He took a deep breath. His chest was still slightly tight, but his breathing was easier now.

Dimitri bit his lower lip. The silence stretched between them. There was a time long ago when they could have filled any such pause with laughter, conversation, warmth. And there was a time not long past when they would have filled it with vitriol and words meant to wound deep and leave marks.

And now there was just… silence. Nothing left to say to one another.

“I am grateful,” Dimitri finally said shakily. “I hope you understand that, Felix. I simply… well, I was alarmed. It’s the middle of the night and you’re clearly awake and… what? Patrolling the palace?”

Felix frowned. Dimitri continued in a very small voice.

“And you aren’t… um, you aren’t wearing any shoes.”

Felix glanced down. His bare feet were in fact touching Dimitri’s soft carpeting.

Suddenly, that horrible, overwhelming feeling seemed to subside all at once. Felix felt his grip on the saber relax and blood returned to his fingertips with a tingle. Stupid to hold a blade so tightly anyways.

Very slightly, he felt his lip twitch.

Dimitri’s face cracked into a hesitant smile as well. It was a look that was both deeply, painfully familiar, and also one which he hadn’t seen in at least fifteen years.

“I suppose… well, it will sound ridiculous if I explain,” Felix admitted.

“You are free to dress as you please in my presence, Felix,” Dimitri said with a faint hint of amusement in his voice. Not quite teasing, but a hand hesitantly extended in that direction, testing the waters to see if Felix swatted back with claws out. “But at council meetings, I must ask that you keep your boots on.”

“I was answering letters,” Felix protested without genuine anger, “in my private chambers where, yes, I happened to have removed my boots. In preparation for sleep, I might add, until I spotted an assassin climbing around on the roof of the palace. You're welcome.”

Dimitri’s smile widened a little and his shoulders shook with a silent laugh.

“Would you like a clean shirt?” Dimitri asked as Felix glanced up once more to check the window. “Or perhaps some water to wash with?”

Felix looked at him incredulously.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, keeping his face fixed on the skyline outside to hide his flush. 

“Do you remember,” Felix suddenly asked, “that night when we tried to stay up until dawn?”

He didn’t turn his head to catch Dimitri’s reaction, instead keeping his eyes fixed on the roof for any sign of movement.

“You mean the night when you fell asleep with your feet in a bucket of snow?” Dimitri finally replied. “I think Glenn might have killed me if he hadn’t already pledged his knighthood because everyone thought you’d caught your death trying to keep yourself up like that.”

“It should have worked,” Felix said shortly, unable to resist a small smile or perhaps a pained grimace at the memory. “Anyways, it’s good that you’re sleeping again. It’s seems strange to recall how easy it once was.”

“Easy?” Dimitri said from beside him, stepping forward to follow his gaze out into the darkness.

“To just drift off,” Felix clarified.

This was getting dangerous, Felix realized. It reminded him too much of a similar night, five years ago, when it had been him and Dimitri alone, awake in the middle of the night.

Dimitri had been soaking wet with rain and Felix had been raw and fleeing desperately from his father’s cooling corpse. Both of them exhausted, just like now, and too full of panic to think rationally.

He had found out the hard way that the disasters that could happen when he stopped watching and waiting and finally acted. Disasters that left him with swollen, bitten lips and a sense of crushing shame and horror and need.

He’d done something unfixably stupid that night. He was about to do it again.

Dimitri opened his mouth, about to speak, when both of them fell silent.

The windows of Felix’s room had just opened. There was a figure standing there, watching them from afar, just as Felix had been mere minutes before. It was difficult to make out details at this distance. The man wore dark clothing, but his face was unnaturally pale, pure white in color, and oddly flat.

A mask, Felix finally realized, the figure was wearing a white mask. Or almost all white. There was a hint of markings on one side that were nearly indistinguishable from shadow.

As they watched, Felix heard Dimitri’s breathing catch. The masked figure watched them for a moment, and then raised one arm. A silent acknowledgement.

Then, the figure leapt lightly up from the balcony and scaled the wall up to the roof of the palace with a few nimble swings, before vanishing over the peak and out of sight.

The darkness was still again. The window to Felix’s room remained ajar.

“That,” Dimitri finally said, “is worrisome.”

“Typical,” Felix scoffed, recovering himself slightly. “Now you decide to take this seriously.”

“Perhaps… if you are willing, of course, you ought to remain here for the rest of the night,” Dimitri offered hesitantly.

Felix felt a brief flash of warmth. He was… glad? Glad that Dimitri offered that trust to him, maybe.

But at the same time, he felt something inside of him recoil and shrink back in horror.

“I should return to my rooms,” Felix said roughly, “once the guards have finished the search and your chambers are secured. That intruder might have taken something. I should do a thorough check.”

“Of course,” Dimitri said softly.

They waited in the dark for another few moments of quiet. Dimitri yawned behind his hand. Felix felt his eyes aching with tiredness.

Another long night, Felix thought. Much like one many, many years ago when they were both younger and less worn down. Felix had tried so hard to stay awake, nearly freezing his toes off in the process.

It was a good lesson, though. One can drift off in any condition, as long as the pain is not too sudden and sharp.

It was the slow and steady sensations that left a man frozen, unmoving, unknowing, and in terrible, silent danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to me caring too much about historical politics I'm on twitter @cyranonic if you want to explain to me about how I have incorrectly used the role of the chancery in this story


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter: emetophobia, hallucinations

_“Many a saute made I to this mirrour_

_Thinking, ‘if þat I looke in þis manere_

_Among folke as I nowe do, noon errour_

_Of suspecte look may in my face appere._

_This countinaunce, I am sure, and þis chere,_

_If I it forthe vse, is nothing repreuable_

_To hem þat han conceitis resonable.’_

_\--Thomas Hoccleve_

It was strange to wake up the morning after an assassination attempt. Dimitri suspected that most people likely would not sleep much after masked men with poisoned blades had been discovered at their doors. And yet, he had slept. He had taken his medicine and he had slept the heavy, yet not entirely restful, sleep that it always brought on.

As light crept through the curtains, Dimitri heard the faint shifting of the guards outside of his door, armor faintly clinking as it moved. He closed his eye. He wished he could sleep again.

The trouble with being the King of Fódlan was that he was supposed to know what to do.

The irony seemed increasingly cruel with every year of his reign. He had demonstrated to the entire world that he was a weak man. Why should that not make him also a weak king?

He would need to decide how to play this incident. Count Gloucester and his allies would surely take it as bait to argue for postponing the elections even further while Count Varley would attempt to blame Dorothea Arnault without a shred of evidence in order to solidify his hold on former Adrestian loyalties. But if Dimitri did not inform them, then they would turn on his confidants, accusing them of withholding critical information.

It would fall on Felix, as always. As every horrible choice he made inevitably fell on Felix.

With the sluggish, slightly sickening slowness of his memory after the sleeping draught, Dimitri recalled Felix the previous night. His face, when Dimitri had awoken, Felix’s hands clasped on his arm, blood still shining on his shirt…

Sometimes it seemed like… but no. No. That was a trick of his mind, one of its many little cruelties he’d learned to spot.

If it seemed like Felix felt anything for him but resignation, he was wrong. After the things he’d done to Felix, it was impossible. It was only a dream that he’d felt the other man’s bloodied hand trembling on his own when he’d woken him in the dark..

Dimitri bit his lip and tried to put that image away. He had promised himself to do better. He had promised everyone, promised Felix, that he would fix himself. Wasn’t that the entire point of his reign? To make amends? To strive towards an imperfect, perhaps unachievable redemption?

And yet, once again, he was backsliding. Thinking of Felix’s fingers clinging to his arm, the fear in Felix’s eyes, the low growl of his voice as he’d repeated Dimitri’s name like the word was a blade piercing straight through his chest…

Dimitri had a secret. Dimitri had many secrets.

For most of his life, he had lived in a web of secrets, piling lies on top of lies until even he forgot the truth beneath them. Maybe he should have tried harder to live true to himself, but too often, he believed it was a service. A blessing to all those around him that they could not see the abject, filthy, ugliness of his life.

And so he kept his secrets. Particularly from Felix, who he had dragged through the gore and muck often enough. No more. Never again.

There was, however, one truth that he was absolutely certain of: something was wrong. He was cracking slowly this time, a stress fracture spiderwebbing larger and larger as the pressure mounted. He did his best to struggle against it, to push back, but nothing helped. The best he could hope for was that some of the burden of kingship would be out of his hands by the time that the glass shattered.

Dimitri forced himself to fight back the exhaustion and sat up.

He had his good days, sometimes. But more often he had days like this, where he balanced between two yawning black voids. One direction whispered to him that he must give up, crumple, fade away, while the other urged him to want, to pursue, to desire.

Dimitri rose with slow, painful determination from the bed and forced himself to go confront the disorganized mess of his room, still chaotic after the upheaval of last night.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Bloodshot eye. A dry pit of scar on the other side. Pale skin after too many months confined to the palace, riding only when he could spare a few moments of peace.

Not a face that would inspire much confidence, particularly when everything now depended on confidence, on a gamble, on trying something that had never been tried before. Dimitri slowly drew his lips into a smile. It looked ghoulish. He tried again, working at the expression until it felt natural.

Something in the mirror behind him moved. Dimitri flinched.

He really ought to be more used to this, but she was… new. Unlike the others, she still caught him off guard.

_'Typical.'_ Edelgard’s voice whispered in his ear. Her mouth didn’t move where she appeared behind him in the mirror. In fact, her image was completely still, a near statue, perfectly poised, as though for a royal portrait.

Dimitri ignored her. He poured water into the basin, tried to smooth his hair and rinse his face.

_'You always miss the bigger issue.'_ Edelgard’s tone was casual, dismissive and yet not malicious. ' _What is the real problem here?'_

“I have more than enough problems,” he muttered, then wrinkled his nose in disappointment. He hardly ever replied to his father or to Glenn anymore. But Edelgard was still… new.

_'Remember who your enemies are.'_ Edelgard reminded him.

_'The mask is not just a disguise. A mask is always a clue.'_

Dimitri watched as the image of the emperor faded as suddenly as she appeared, as though she had simply stepped back into a shadow. Slowly, he lowered his head and stared down into the water basin.

He felt pathetically fearful whenever he saw Edelgard alongside his other ghosts. She was a clear reminder that the madness within him was not merely confined to Duscur. No, it lingered and grew and aged alongside him. This was his madness maturing.

His attendants soon entered to attire him, serve him delicacies too fine for his undiscerning mouth, and straighten up the room.

“Your Majesty, will you take exercise before you go to the Privy Council this morning?”

Dimitri nodded absently. His retainers right now were mostly strangers to him, the sons of various knights all sent to learn the court. They were unfailingly polite and deferential with him.

Also, sometimes Dimitri thought that they were afraid of him too.

He tried to restrain himself so that they had few reasons to be afraid, but he did not blame boys no older than nineteen for nervousness in the presence of a man who claimed the throne in a shower of blood. He would not blame them either, if they knew that the man they served sometimes glanced over his shoulder because the voice of his dead father had just whispered in his ear.

And so Dimitri smiled again, forcing his face to show them stability and confidence.

Dimitri took his exercise with the palace fencing master most mornings. The training was a familiar ritual, as rote and regular as the steps of a dance. He had not shed blood with a blade in nearly five years. It was easy to forget how different it felt when he was lost in the comforting routine of blocks and footwork.

As Dimitri walked, with retainers flocking around him, to the courtyard, he passed a pair of servants on the stairs. Janine and Maxim, he recalled. Janine was injured in the war and had fled to Fhirdiad as a refugee. She had a nervous disposition and was prone to jumping and hiding at sudden noises. Maxim was of Duscur. He did not speak anymore, although Dimitri knew him to be expressive with paints.

Both of them had been granted their positions in the palace after Dimitri had ordered them released from the Church’s hospital, where those like the both of them, whose bodies showed no physical sign of trauma, were kept isolated, listless, and alone for want of knowledge of how to help them.

Dimitri had believed that taking them from those dark, lonely rooms and giving them space to talk and listen and feel a part of something might help. Now, he watched the pair of them scrubbing at what was clearly the remains of a bloodstain on the white marble. He wondered whether any of the things he tried helped anyone at all.

Something was wrong, he reminded himself. He did not understand quite what yet, but he felt the discord and the emptiness it left inside of him as his attendants filed down around the wet portion of the stairs.

When he arrived at pavilion in the gardens where he often began the day with a training kata, he found the fencing master already occupied. Dimitri felt a surge of both excitement and shame.

Felix was there, shifting gracefully from one stance to another, methodical and perfect as always in his motions. Felix was there and Dimitri’s heart thrilled, as always, to see him. And yet, Felix was there. Felix had not slept even a minute last night because of him, and now he was awake early, preparing to throw himself into more danger for Dimitri’s sake.

“Your Grace,” Dimitri said finally, announcing himself before Felix noticed him lingering at the sidelines like a shy schoolboy. “I hope you are well this morning.”

Felix paused and then glanced at him. Dimitri hoped that his question was innocuous enough as he noticed that Felix did have dark circles beneath his eyes.

“Better than you,” Felix finally snorted derisively. He averted his eyes again and returned to his forms. Then he added, almost under his breath. “Wearing shoes this time.”

“That is good to see,” Dimitri replied, feeling a rush of something warm at the little, rare offering of humor. “I was able to sleep soundly.”

“Hm,” Felix scoffed. “Prove it.”

Ah, Dimitri realized, it was to be that sort of morning.

Dimitri watched the shift of muscle beneath the skin of Felix’s shoulder. It was a hot morning already and Felix wore only a thin shirt. A strand of hair shifted and swayed with his motions. Felix was a sight to behold in summer. While in the cold, he was as stark and striking as a slash of ink, in summer his edges softened just enough to make him breathtaking. 

One night, Dimitri recalled, when he was at the lowest point he had probably ever been, Felix had kissed him. When they were fourteen, Felix had kissed him and they had both been giddy, happy, wild with nervous joy. But that feeling was dead, brutalized and crushed in the Western Rebellion.

And then they had both been twenty-three and Felix had kissed him. Or maybe it was the other way around, Dimitri had kissed him, taken advantage of his grief and confusion, found yet another way to throw Felix into harm’s way.

Those were thoughts better left unthought, he reminded himself. His mind made it all too unclear and while sometimes that burning longing rose up again, he pushed it away. 

“I accept your challenge, Duke Fraldaius,” Dimitri said. He knew that what he was doing was skirting a dangerous edge. He ought to keep a better distance when that darkness inside of him _wanted_ so very badly.

But Dimitri had years of practice at pretending something is fine, at layering one reality over another, at correcting the mistakes and painting over the canvas until even he could forget that this was nothing but a friendly spar between companions on a summer morning with no other danger awaiting them.

He held out his hand and the fencing master passed him a blade.

Felix leapt forward at once. They never sparred to win when it was the two of them. Or, more accurately, they each won and lost a hundred times and kept fighting regardless until exhaustion forced them to stop.

Dimitri barely noticed the way that the courtyard around them had gone silent, that the attendants stopped muttering to one another and the gardeners paused their shears to watch. He narrowed his focus to only Felix, to watching for that tiny twitch of his brow that meant he would feint left or that slight adjustment of grip that meant a harder strike was coming.

When he and Felix fought, it felt like, for a brief rare moment, Dimitri knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Keep your elbow in!”

Dimitri turned sharply at the voice. Felix struck him a vicious rap to the ribs in retaliation for his distraction.

But it was Ingrid’s voice. She stood watching them, arms folded over her chest. She wore a gown for the court, although she seemed self-conscious of her bare shoulders in line with the latest in summer fashions.

“Ingrid,” Dimitri greeted her, still breathless from the fight. He rubbed his ribs as Felix finally lowered his blade with a slight smirk. “I had not realized you had arrived back in Fhirdiad.”

“Our crops are planted, and so I thought I might attend my father at court for a season,” Ingrid said with a smile. “Besides, someone needs to reign in Sylvain. I’ve heard rumors of him carousing at every tavern in the city, and basically on the eve of an election…”

Her face darkened as she brought up Sylvain, but Dimitri could see the edge of tenderness in her expression. Ingrid tugged anxiously at her collar again, as though she could yank the neckline up and transform the garment into a practical tunic.

“He’s not Margrave yet at least,” Felix said dryly, passing off his training sword and stepping down from the pavilion to give Ingrid one of his brusque, knightly arm clasps. It was slightly out of line with her ladylike attire, but Dimitri saw how she immediately straightened her posture.

“His father is still handling the lords on the Privy Council well enough,” Felix continued, “so I suppose if he wishes to drink himself into a stupor now…”

“He’s a disaster,” Ingrid frowned. “Even if he isn’t yet Margrave of Gautier, he could still make himself useful to the cause.”

“Is your father well, Ingrid?” Dimitri asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from condemning Sylvain’s recent relapse into truly dissolute behavior.

“He is well enough,” Ingrid said, although there was some stain in her voice. Count Galatea was fading alongside his farmlands. It was an open secret that his daughter now managed the territory in his name.

Nevertheless, he was a critical member of the Lords Assembly to sway. He often was last to approve the measures that Dimitri needed for a majority, citing concerns of radicalism or instability. He was not a pure obstructionist like Count Gloucester, but he was cautious to a fault.

“But how are things here in Fhirdiad?” Ingrid continued, changing the subject. “Are the lords beginning to come around to the idea of the Act of Representation now that it is fairly inevitable?”

Dimitri smiled diplomatically, but Felix spoke before he had the chance.

“Of course not,” Felix said sharply. “Nothing will change Gloucester’s mind. He and most of western Faerghus still oppose the charter.”

“Well, I only hope it will be a peaceful process,” Ingrid sighed, looking worried. “Whatever I can do, Dimitri.”

“I will be glad of your support, Ingrid,” Dimitri reassured her.

In his heart, he wished that she had remained in Galatea to pry wealth from its rocky soil. If the previous night was any indication, her presence at court would only throw her deeper into danger. And not the sort of danger that he was confident she could handle, that of an open battlefield.

No, Fhirdiad could be a subtly dangerous place. While the Adrestians in Enbarr might mock the northern capital for its barbaric simplicity, even they had conceded that the lords of Faerghus had a particular talent for brutality in their politics.

An Adrestian might fill the air with whispers and spread rumors like a knife slipping through ribs, but Faerghus lords preferred silence, wielded like a heavy club. Dimitri recalled his own childhood, his father and stepmother so strangled by the oppressive silence of chivalry and propriety that they scarcely spoke to one another, and his uncle, Rufus, consumed by secrets he assumed would keep him on the throne when in reality, they simply melted away and left him defenseless. 

Dimitri followed that proud legacy, swallowing back every other word he spoke.

“Your Majesty, Your Grace, My Lady,” an attendant reminded them, “it is not long until the Privy Council is set to convene.”

Dimitri looked at Ingrid and Felix for another moment. The three of them had stood in this courtyard together like this so many times, spanning years and years of their lives. It was strange to be here now as the adults, the ones who made the grand plans of nations instead of trying to sneak off together to play games before another long and dull state banquet.

“I will see the both of you there?” Dimitri asked, sparing a slightly uncertain glance at Felix. He had still not made up his mind about publicizing the attempted assassination. They were supposed to discuss other matters, amendments to the charter, preparations for the Unification Ball.

Ingrid nodded and Felix jerked his head. But before Dimitri was swept away to be properly washed and dressed for court, Felix caught him by the arm, his hand making brief contact with Dimitri’s before he jerked it back, as though he’d been burned.

“You have to tell them,” Felix whispered. “Half of the guard was up patrolling the halls last night; the rumor will only spread.”

“It will make things difficult,” Dimitri replied, irritated and yet relieved that Felix was attempting to make the hard choice for him. “They will blame Dorothea Arnault. The coincidence is too good to ignore.”

“And if she actually is to blame?” Felix asked.

“I will not execute her, Felix,” Dimitri shook his head. “Hers is a necessary voice right now, however defiant. Only the tyrant looks for excuses to silence those who speak against him.”

As he stepped away, he felt Felix’s frustrated eyes on his back. Better that Felix not be subjected, Dimitri thought with grim humor, to some of the voices that Dimitri considered necessary.

When Dimitri arrived at the council chamber, freshly washed, attired in pressed linen for the heat, and dabbed generously with lemon verbena oil, he found the room already full.

Chairs scraped back as he entered and took his seat at the head of the table. The chair to his left was empty, reserved for Mercedes in her capacity as the Bishop of Faerghus. Felix sat to his right, a silver clasp on his capelet marking him as the Royal Chancellor.

Margrave Gautier nodded to Dimitri somberly as he sat. His auburn hair and beard were closely cropped and perfectly kept. As Lord Speaker, he wore the lion livery of Faerghus alongside the great seal of United Fódlan around his neck.

“You look well, Margave,” Dimitri said with a nod in return. The Margrave Gautier always looked well. He was as hale and hearty and ruddy and broad chested as any painting of a Faerghan lord. While Dimitri had initially been troubled by the Margrave’s treatment of his eldest son, no one could debate the fact that Gautier had remained loyal even at the cusp of defeat by the Dukedom.

And, Dimitri thought, people changed. People were weak, and yet they worked to be better.

He was in no position to damn the Margrave for whatever had occurred with Milkan. If Margrave Gautier had once represented everything wrong with the Crest system, now he was openly defending a law which would allow those whose families could trace no descent from the Ten Elites to sit at the highest level of government.

People changed. People improved. People were weak and yet they found the strength to be better. Dimitri had to believe in these things. And he had to live for that belief. Because if this fundamental fact was not true, merely another illusion dreamed up by his sick mind, then what was a wretched creature like him to do? 

Margrave Edmund was also present, the first Alliance lord Dimitri had added to his council, bearing the title of Lord Privy Seal. He was a thin, greyish man, although it was the grey of hard steel. When the Margrave Edmund spoke, his words were firm, indisputable, and so intricately argued that even the finest scholars would need weeks to untangle any flaws in his logic. 

Another man, Dimitri observed, who had proved better than his past self. Before naming him to the post, Dimitri had found a rather ugly record of Edmund’s attempts to adopt a Crest-bearing daughter and have her married to the richest and most influential bachelors he could sway. Another sign of the rot that inequality produced. And yet the Margrave Edmund had learned better. His daughter remained unmarried, as she apparently wished.

Finally, there was Lord Varley, a strategic appointment to the position of King’s Solicitor that had pacified many wealthy Adrestians concerned that Faerghus would seize the lands of those who had fought against it as vengeance. He had once been Minister of Religion, and as such, he had a gentle and pious manner that belied a quick temper. However, while he might snap at servants, Lord Varley had never mentioned the fact that he had lost a daughter in the war, burned alive at Gronder. Dimitri resisted the urge to shiver whenever he met the man’s blue-grey eyes, so familiar to a girl he had once known.

If Lord Varley could rise above the desire for vengeance, to have blood to quit the blood of his daughter, then hopefully the rest of Fódlan could do the same. Dimitri would forgive the man’s anger for now. He remembered that feeling of rage pounding in his blood day and night. Lord Varley kept it better controlled than he ever had.

Dedue’s chair was not empty, although he was still travelling back from Duscur. Instead, one of his clerks was present.

Naming Dedue as his Royal Secretary had been a great shock of his early reign, particularly to Dedue, who thought himself unsuitable for such work and had petitioned to be named a member of the King’s Guard instead. However, his natural meticulousness, an eye of detail, and a sense of proper timing critical to the successful cook and gardener, had made him invaluable in the position.

The only unfilled seat in the room was that of Count Galatea, the Lord Treasurer. Many still sneered at his appointment to the position. Dimitri had caught an attendant passing around copies of an unflattering poem about the pauper lord entrusted with the king’s coffers only the previous week. In fact, Dimitri had selected Count Galatea precisely because he had believed a man who knew the dangers of poverty might be more compassionate. He had neglected to recall the desperation that poverty had so often pushed Count Galatea into

But, Dimitri reminded himself, he would get better. There was time left yet in the old man’s life for him to learn. Dimitri would not give up on him.

When he arrived, only a few minutes late, Ingrid was leading him by the arm. His blond hair, faded mostly to pale greyish white, looked thinner than the last time that Dimitri had seen him. He sat heavily down into his chair.

“What are we waiting for?” he said irritably after a few seconds. 

Dimitri carefully replaced his smile. His chest felt very tight. On his right, he could feel Felix’s eyes on him. He struggled to make sure that his lips did not tremble and his eyes did not go flat.

“It is less than a month now until the members of the Grand Assembly will be chosen, and only weeks from the Unification Ball when most of the Lords Assembly will be in Fhirdiad,” Dimitri finally began. “This will be a time of turbulence. Nothing of this scope has been attempted before, by any nation of Fódlan, even before the unification. In a time such as this, unrest is to be expected.

He paused. Margrave Edmund kept his face perfectly neutral, while Margrave Gautier showed only a slight edge of interest. Count Galatea was frowning, while Ingrid, who remained just behind his chair, was staring at Dimitri with outright concern.

“Which is why I must ask that you do all in your power to prevent any upset in your respective territories when the news spreads that an assassin was slain in the palace last night,” Dimitri finished.

Dimitri lacked peripheral vision on his right side. He resisted the urge to glance over and check Felix’s reaction.

“Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier said at once, attempting to control the direction of the conversation. “Was anyone injured?”

“No,” Dimitri said gratefully. “It was a lone individual, easily outmatched by Duke Fraldarius.”

Margrave Gautier gave Felix an admiring tilt of his head, which Felix ignored in favor of glaring at Dimitri.

“The Lords Assembly may attempt to issue a censure, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier warned, “if they feel you are being careless with your life. I suggest remaining sequestered and cancelling the Unification Ball, waiting until the election has passed and giving them no grounds to question your judgement.”

“Sequestered?” Count Galatea snorted. “If the assassin was here in the palace, I hardly think that will help.”

“Have your guards identified any organization with which this assassin might have been affiliated?” Margrave Edmund asked. “An assassin who can bypass the not insubstantial protections of the Fhirdiad castle is likely one with connections.”

“He bore no mark,” Felix cut in. “But that means nothing.”

“On the contrary,” Margrave Edmund said, “it means that our assassin did not want to be affiliated with anyone who might then be unable to send more of his kind into the palace.”

“Can’t we just stop this debate and admit that it is Arnault?” Count Galatea asked. “She arrives in the city and only days later, an assassin is in the king’s bedchamber.”

“Not in my—” Dimitri began.

“if she was planning to have the king murdered, then why come herself?” Felix interrupted.

Dimitri couldn’t resist a twitch of a genuine smile. Felix was so very rude when making his occasionally brilliant insights; it made everyone’s agreement all the more begrudging. 

“A fair point,” Margrave Gautier said immediately. He spoke forcefully, with less grace than the Margrave Edmund, but equal fervor. “Why would she put herself in a position to be so easily arrested? Why not send the order while she is safe in some rebel huddle in Aegir territory?”

“Because she assumed that her assassin would slay the king in his bed,” Count Galatea retorted. “And then she would collect her rabble and take the city unopposed!”

Ingrid winced slightly as her father raised his voice and then began to cough.

“I don’t think Dorothea would—” Ingrid began.

“You are not a member of this council,” her father snapped at her, chest still heaving from the coughing fit. “If you wish to reminisce over schooldays, do it elsewhere.”

Ingrid fell silent, although Dimitri could see she was biting her lip hard enough to break the skin.

“There has been unrest throughout the capital of late,” Lord Varley took the brief silence as an opportunity to speak. “I have heard there was a riot at the market, that a group of malcontents burned a royal barge in the harbor. As far as Arianrhod, I have heard that the people seize the king’s justices and drive them from their villages. And in Adrestia, the anarchy only grows worse. There is not a home in the countryside not hiding seditious printings. No taxes have been taken from Bergliez territory in five years, for the collectors fear to walk there in the royal livery.”

“Dorothea Arnault is only one woman, you can’t possibly believe she’s pulling the strings on all of this,” Felix retorted.

He was defending her, Dimitri realized, even though he suspected her. All because Dimitri had mentioned that he thought her to be necessary.

“Arnault is only ‘one woman.’ As the Flame Emperor was only ‘one woman,’” Lord Varley reminded Felix with a disgusted curl of his lip. “If the king does not do something to restrain this, he will have commoners rallying and marching against him across the continent.”

“Will not the elections pacify them?” Margrave Edmund interjected, phrasing his statement tantalizingly as a question. “If the folk are rioting, won’t Arnault lose her greatest weapon once it is Crested and commoner alike who rule them?”

“Perhaps then,” Count Galatea said, clearing his throat a few times as Ingrid silently handed him a handkerchief to wipe his lips with, “the news is different in Galatea. We have heard rumors that Arnault is no longer merely defying the king. She is petitioning her supporters to elect her to office.”

At that, the entire table exploded. Margrave Edmund was on his feet, trying to shout over the chaos, while Felix nearly slammed his palm into the table hard enough that Dimitri felt the wood rattle.

“Arrest her and be done with it—”

“Only to inflame the people further, to make a martyr of her? You’ll destroy—”

“Postpone the election—”

“If she wins, the Lord Assembly will refuse to recognize—”

“Delay the votes—”

“If one of the peerage takes matters into his own hands, it is only a matter of time until blood is—"

“Surely waiting until next year would improve—”

Dimitri felt his head beginning to throb. He remained seated, massaging his temples while the rest of the Privy Council snarled at one another.

He was failing again. He felt that yawning black void opening up before him. It had been so easy, with the professor at his side, to believe that he could set things right. Perhaps that was the trouble. It had been the professor who had always guided him. Now he merely broke things further.

He was supposed to know what to do.

“Enough,” Dimitri whispered.

No one seemed to be listening. Margrave Gautier was listing reasons to Lord Varley as to why a public arrest would be not only inadvisable, but in violation of Arnault’s royal pardon. The substitute secretary was quaking as Count Galatea struggled to articulate to him why an immediate purging of the ballots would be required. Felix and Ingrid were somehow squabbling, Ingrid having grabbed Felix by the elbow to whisper fiercely and furiously into his ear.

“—should have told me, you always leave me out of things here, you should have said something!” she hissed and Dimitri saw a strange, sullen, expression cross her face that he had never seen on her before.

“Enough,” Dimitri said more urgently. He was the king. But if he raised his voice, what if he was not the king? What if he was the tyrant, or worse, the monster?

And what should he say? There was not easy answer, no clear right choice. No matter what he did, the common folk and the nobility veered every closer to clash and conflict. Another war, he thought, feeling his stomach lurch sickeningly. He was about to start another war.

He’d won the last war. That was indisputable. But sometimes, sometimes on his darkest days, or perhaps in his greatest moments of clarity, he worried that he had been wrong. That Edelgard had been right. That the war had left him the victor and his path was the wrong one.

“We cannot elect a Grand Assembly that will endanger our people, we must defer the—”

Dimitri rose from his chair. Every face in the room suddenly turned to him.

Wordlessly, he pushed back from his chair and walked out of the room.

His attendants were waiting in the antechamber and immediately leapt to their feet. Dimitri did not wait for them to collect themselves. He walked as fast as he could, taking random passages, hoping to lose them.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let this happen again. He needed the professor back to take control, needed someone better and stronger to fix what he had once again broken.

Sharply, he turned into a little cloistered courtyard, vaulted over the low wall, and then vanished into a grove of ornamental fruit trees. His head was throbbing. His stomach hurt. His vision swam as he braced himself against a pear tree. It felt like his head was in a vice, and his stomach was churning, his throat burning…

He threw up against the side of the tree.

Just like another day, a day he tried never to think about. He remembered the poisoning in flashes. Felix had found him.

That was one of many reasons he still found it impossible to pray to Sothis. How could a goddess with any mercy in her heart have let Felix be the one to find him?

“Are you alright?”

Dimitri started violently at the voice. As he glanced behind him, he saw that sitting on a nearby stone bench was a young lady. The Margrave Edmund’s daughter, to be precise. Marianne von Edmund.

Shame washed over him and he hurried to find a handkerchief in his pocket to wipe his mouth.

“Yes,” he managed to say. “I apologize. I have a certain affliction, headaches that…”

“Here,” she said, getting to her feet and stepping forward. A glyph flickered in the air around her hand and Dimitri felt some of the blinding pain in his skull lessen. Marianne stepped back, clenching her hands uncomfortably in her skirt when she had finished.

“Thank you,” Dimitri said, gently touching his temple.

“It’s nothing,” Marianne stammered. “I just—I have been studying… sorry, I’m bothering you.”

“No, please,” Dimitri said, “I am the one who just came thoughtlessly blundering in to ruin your peace with my illness.”

Marianne looked down. Her eyes were a warm brown, but she seemed unwilling to look at him.

From his recollection, she had been a student at the Officers Academy, although he’d scarcely seen her. He had assumed she would eventually take up a position as a nun there, but apparently her love for her father kept her at home.

Except, he recalled, she had also loved horses. Although he wasn’t sure he had ever seen her ride, he remembered that they had often passed one another at the stables.

“Your faith magic,” Dimitri said awkwardly, “I’ve never seen a technique like that before to heal an ailment without a wound. I wonder if you might share it with the palace healers?”

“It is just something silly,” Marianne immediately shook her head. “Your healers probably know much better ways. It is meant for, that is, Dorte has a kissing spine and so…”

“Ah, Dorte!” Dimitri exclaimed, his voice too loud and undignified. “Your horse from the Officers Academy, right? It is good to hear that he survived the war.”

“Oh,” Marianne said, pressing her lips together. “Thank you. I should really… um, that is, I’m sorry for interrupting you.

She hurried away before he could call out or stop her. Dimitri sighed heavily. He kicked dirt over some of the sick he’d left on the ground. Some had gotten onto his boots.

Distantly, he heard the sound of his attendants shouting for him. He ought to return. He had worried them needlessly again. Rumors would spread that the king was ill, nobles would scheme, commoners would panic. He needed to return and prove to them that he was fine before this got even worse. But for some reason, it felt impossible to make his legs move.

Finally, he stepped out from the trees and surrendered.

“I will return to the council chamber,” he said quietly before any of them would speak.

“Your Majesty, if you are ill—”

Dimitri closed his eye and struggled to keep his smile on. Of course, it was obvious that he was unwell. What could he hope to accomplish by returning? He still had no answer to the problem of Dorothea Arnault.

“I will return to the council chamber,” Dimitri insisted. “If one of you might bring me water.”

By the time he returned to the chamber, the whole Privy Council was already standing in the hall, apparently searching for him. Felix looked furious, while Ingrid looked simply cold.

“What were you thinking?” Felix immediately snarled as Dimitri approached. Dimitri averted his face, hoping Felix would not notice the sour reek of bile on his breath. “You can’t just go charging off, not when—”

“I required a short—”

“What is wrong with you?” Felix accused him. The look on his face was pure disgust. Despite everything, Felix was still disgusted by him, barely tolerated him, barely forgave him enough to help him. “If you continue like this—”

“Please, don’t—” Dimitri tried to beg him quietly, so that the other lords would not hear.

“Reckless,” Felix snapped. “Senseless. You can’t just run off whenever you please—”

“Do not shout at me!” Dimitri said, louder than he meant. His voice rang out in the small space, spitting the air and leaving silence in its wake.

It had been a desperate plea. But it had sounded like a command.

Felix went silent, his teeth clenched and his expression blank. Behind him, Dimitri saw his courtiers turning to whisper to one another. To accuse Felix of disrespecting the king, to spread rumor that Felix would fall from favor, to further damage and weaken his position as Chancellor.

“Hey… sorry I’m late everybody.”

The silence was broken by the late arrival of Sylvain Gautier, his coat misbuttoned, his hair rakishly unkempt, at least half an hour late for the council meeting.

“Huh,” Sylvain said, looking flatly down the hall. “It already over?”

“Yes,” Dimitri finally conceded. “We will reschedule.”

“Great,” Sylvain said with a lazy smile. “I love it when things I don’t want to do get rescheduled.”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid began, her voice full of warning.

“Ingrid!” Sylvain exclaimed, as though he’d only just noticed her. “You’re back! How’s the… farming stuff.

He hiccupped. Already drunk, Dimitri realized, before noon. Dimitri caught a glimpse of Margrave Gautier rolling his eyes.

“Incorrigible,” Ingrid muttered.

“Come on, did I miss anything _that_ important?” Sylvain laughed.

“You’re supposed to be serving the king,” Ingrid said coldly. “Your nation is on the brink of upheaval and yet you insist on rendering yourself useless with wine.”

“Serving the king?” Sylvain said, squinting over at Dimitri. “Very well, dearest Ingrid. I shall make myself serviceable in the best way I know. Come out for a drink, tonight, Dimitri! Let me help you lay your burdens down.”

Felix looked at Dimitri sharply.

“I…” Dimitri began. Felix stared at him. Reckless, Dimitri recalled him saying, senseless.

“His Majesty is unwell,” Margrave Gautier said coldly. “You might be more aware of how to render yourself useful if you could rouse yourself in time for anything of import.”

“Ingrid will catch me up,” Sylvain winked heavily at Ingrid.

Count Galatea glared at him and then began to cough heavily into his elbow again. Ingrid held his arm to steady him.

“I will retire for now,” Dimitri said, dismissing his lords to their duties. Ingrid cast a glance back at him over her shoulder, looking like she had more to say, but she was unwilling to leave her father’s side.

Margrave Gautier gave his son a stern glare as he left. Felix lingered. Dimitri lingered, his attendants hesitating uncertainly behind them in the corridor, as though they weren’t sure if they would need to sprint after him again if he decided to run.

“Sylvain,” Felix said grimly, once the other council members were gone, as though Dimitri was invisible to him suddenly.

“Felix,” Sylvain said, in a dour parody of Felix’s demeanor.

“Last night I killed an assassin in the palace,” Felix said, ignoring Sylvain’s jest. “You need to be more careful.”

“An assassin, oh no,” Sylvain said with a mocking horror. “Come on Felix, we’ve both seen His Majesty take on half an army by himself. He could wrestle a demonic beast with those arms; he’s not getting taken out by some malcontent with a pocket knife.”

Sylvain clapped Dimitri on the shoulder easily. Sylvain was not disgusted by him, Dimitri realized. Sylvain did not flinch back if their hands accidentally brushed.

“You’re an idiot,” Felix began.

“You know…” Dimitri said, a strange, contrarian impulse rising up irresistibly inside of him. A tavern, he thought, was just the place where he could _do_ something. Instead of sitting and debating, he could listen to his people, find a solution. “I believe he is correct. This assassination business has tired my spirits. I believe I drink would do me some good.”

“I know just the place,” Sylvain eagerly agreed. “Mistress Tippler has spirits plenty to calm yours.”

“You can’t be serious,” Felix said flatly.

“I can’t be?” Dimitri asked, turning suddenly to leave. “Well then, if I cannot be serious, then I should drink.”

He did not turn back to see the disappointment on Felix’s face. It would not be a new expression. Perhaps it was even for the best, if Felix stayed away from him, stopped forcing himself to take up the title of the father he had hated.

But it would hurt enough that Dimitri wasn’t sure he could keep the smile on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please read Hocccleve's complaint it is worth it


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: panic attacks, discussions of political violence

_“And, syr, in fayth, why comste not us amonge_

_To make the mery, as other felowes done?_

_Thou muste swere and stare, man, aldaye longe,_

_And wake all nyghte and slepe tyll it be none;_

_Thou mayste not studye or muse on the mone.”_

_\--John Skelton_

Of all the idiocies in the world, Felix did not know whose was the greatest right now

Sylvian, for inviting the king out to a tavern when Dorothea Arnault was in the city and she had probably just tried to murder him. Dimitri, for having accepted out of spite, apparently more concerned with demonstrating his irritation to Felix than his own life.

Or Felix, fool, in love with him and currently trying to cobble together an outfit without anything too obviously expensive about it so that he could follow Dimitri when he inevitably snuck out.

It was, Felix thought as he ripped an ermine collar from one of his winter travelling cloaks, very inconvenient to be in love. He wondered how other people lived their lives.

Probably happy, unworried, sleeping soundly at night, not in love with an idealistic, stubborn moron who thought that bearing his breast to every knife in Fódlan somehow made him a kinder, fairer king.

Stupid, Felix thought, as he slid down one of the drainage pipes on the wall, this was all so very stupid. He was getting rust on his sleeves. Maybe that was good. More authentic that way.

If only Dedue was here, he would have hauled the king back to his rooms, Felix thought darkly. Instead, Dimitri would have to contend with him. Goddess help him, Felix was a poor substitute for Dedue’s gentle, firm rationality that would have seen Dimitri retreating to his chambers with a single look.

No, Felix thought, he was the one who had insulted and shouted at Dimitri. He recalled that with a burning knot of shame in his stomach. 

He reached the bottom of the drainage pipe and stood in the soggy marsh beneath it. He was sweating already on such a hot night.

Only seconds later, the secret portcullis opened. Felix knew that it led down from the royal library, which both Dimitri and Sylvian had developed a sudden interest in visiting after dinner that evening.

“How is your research going?” Felix asked coldly as two cloaked figures slipped out. The taller figure jumped at his voice, while the other did not.

“Ah, Dimitri, it seems that some ruffian is waiting to ambush us by the gate, allow me to defend you,” Sylvian deadpanned. “Look at the terrible state of his _brocaded_ vest, he must be a true scoundrel.”

Felix flushed and then cursed as he stripped off the vest and flung it into the mud.

“Felix, what are you doing here?” Dimitri asked.

While it was impossible to disguise him, Felix had to admit that Sylvain had done a decent job. There was no way to reshape that angular jaw, the proud jut of his nose, the broad line of his shoulders, but Sylvain had somehow managed to find a set of battered leather armor and woven enough messy braids into his golden hair that Dimitri looked every bit the mercenary barbarian rather than a king.

For himself, Sylvain did not try to dress like a commoner. He was probably well known enough in the taverns of Fhirdiad, from the market to the south river, that it did not matter.

“Yes, Felix, I’m not sure I invited you to this little outing,” Sylvain said with a raise of his brow.

“I can’t stop you from going,” Felix said finally. “But I can follow you so that when someone does inevitably try to abduct and ransom both of you idiots, I will be there to fight them off.”

“Felix, you don’t have to,” Dimitri said desperately. “I could take a guard, maybe. You must rest.”

“I know you don’t want me there,” Felix growled through gritted teeth. “I understand that I am… poor company. But before I was your chancellor, remember that I was a soldier.”

“Alright, fine,” Sylvian sighed dramatically. “I guess you’re invited, but you don’t have to lean so hard on my pity, Felix.” 

Dimitri still looked concerned. There was something comical about the way that his worry showed so plainly on his face when he was dressed like a highway robber. Or maybe something that _would_ have been comical if it didn’t make Felix’s heart start beating in double time.

“Save it,” Felix snapped before Dimitri could voice any further objections. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“This was a mistake,” Dimitri mumbled to himself as Sylvain led the way towards the street.

“It’s… fine,” Felix managed to force out. “Just enjoy your damned drink.”

Sylvain led the way down from the palace hill and into Fhirdiad itself. Felix knew the city well from the back of a horse or the interior of a carriage, but he was somewhat discomforted to know that it was mostly unfamiliar to him on foot.

Suddenly, every alley and rooftop loomed up as a perfect spot for an ambush. He still had his sword at one side and a pair of knives, one in his coat and one in his boot.

Stop craving it, he commanded himself firmly as he felt his blood begin to quicken. Stop craving the war.

There might be assassins in the city, but it was still Fhirdiad, the seat of Blaiddyd power, the place where Dimitri had always been beloved. If Felix couldn’t keep himself under control and pulled a blade on some young apprentice, he would only be bring Dimitri more trouble.

He glanced over at his companions as they walked. Sylvain moved easily through the streets, never pausing to look around, as though his feet remembered the well-trodden path to Mistress Tippler’s tavern. Dimitri, on the other hand, watched the city with fondness. He didn’t walk like a boy born to be prince, Felix realized, because he’d spent those five years surviving and struggling among people just like this.

The tavern itself turned out to be a two-story building nestled between the southbank and baker’s row. It was in the cramped old town of the city, before Cornelia had arrived to restructure the waterways and put an end to the yearly cholera that tormented Fhirdiad in summer. Still, the old town of Fhirdiad was crowded, especially on a hot night when people preferred to sit out in the streets to escape the stuffy heat of their homes

There was a painted sign at the door to the tavern depicting seven stars. Felix allowed Sylvain and Dimitri to enter first, spinning around once to ensure that they weren’t being followed.

“Sylvain Gautier!” a high female voice was saying shrilly as Felix entered.

“Nell!” Sylvain said in response. He had opened his arms to embrace a thin, blonde woman wearing a gauzy maroon dress that rendered her complexion almost colorless. She, however, was not rushing to embrace him.

“You said you’d call on me,” she said with a pout.

“And I have, Nell, I have,” Sylvain said with a dashing grin. “Look, meet some of my friends! This fellow here is another little lordling like myself, but don’t mention it, he’s in disguise.”

Felix wished desperately to draw the knife in his coat and teach Sylvain that tongues were a privilege and not a right.

“And this is Mitya, his manservant,” Sylvain continued, pointing to Dimitri, whose cheeks pinked slightly as he attempted to bow and then seemed to remember his character and jutted his chin out instead. The name was bad, Felix thought darkly, although half of the boy’s born in Dimitri’s birthyear were called Mitya after him.

“Nell,” Felix said flatly as Sylvain swept the woman over to a table and attempted to kiss her hand before she jerked it back.

“You said you’d see me last week,” Nell hissed at Sylvain. “The Knights of Seiros will be back soon enough, Sylvie, and my husband with them!”

Dimitri shot Felix a look and silently mouthed ‘ _Sylvie?_ ’ at the same time that Felix silently mouthed _‘husband?’_

“Let me buy you a drink and make it up to you,” Sylvain pleaded. “Come on, Nell, you know I’ve missed you.”

“You’ll miss me more when my husband gets back from Hrym,” Nell snapped back. But then she relented. “Buy us something fancy.”

“A bottle of your finest, mistress,” Sylvain immediately cried to the tavern keeper, a very muscular older woman who was missing an eye, although she wore a painted glass one in its place. Dimitri raised his eyebrows and looked vaguely excited by that.

Felix slowly lowered himself onto a stool around one of the round wooden tables and began taking stock of the tavern. It was very dimly lit by only a few candles since the hearth was not burning in the summer’s heat. That might be a blessing or a curse, Felix evaluated. Difficult to spot anyone suspicious, although they certainly counted in that category.

Felix spotted that one man had a short sword at his belt, probably a night watchman or something similar by his clothes. Others had knives, but no ranged weapons that Felix could spot, unless one of them possessed one of those mechanical devices Felix had heard of in Adrestia where a poisoned dart could be fired from within the sleeve of a garment.

Sylvain was pouring them all full cups of wine from his bottle. Dimitri sipped his with far too much politeness for such a ruffian. Felix left his untouched.

“Some place you’ve brought us,” Felix said, glaring around at the rest of the tavern.

“Anyone catching your eye, Felix?” Sylvain said with a grin, deliberately misunderstanding. Nell appeared to be mollified by the expensive wine and was sitting draped over his knee.

“I’m not here to—” Felix sighed heavily. “Do as you please. Just pretend that I’m not here.”

“Who did you say your friends were again?” Nell asked doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m a manservant,” Dimitri said brightly. “Just here to protect these young lords.”

It was good, Felix rationalized, that Dimitri was enjoying this little charade. Perhaps it would do him some good, get him to relax. If it could just not be at Felix’s expense, that would be even better.

He stared pointedly in the opposite direction, carefully watching a group of delvers playing a game of dice rather despondently over their mugs.

“I have some friends too, if you’re interested,” Nell was saying with a kittenish grin. Dimitri blinked at her in apparent confusion. Felix tried not to give away how tight his jaw was getting.

“They also married?” he said under his breath, but not quietly enough.

“Hey!” Nell snapped at him. “My husband is a Knight of Seiros! He’s a holy man, and I won’t hear anything against him.”

“Sweetness,” Sylvain intervened, “don’t get angry with him, he enjoys it.”

Felix nearly threw the full cup of wine at him this time, but managed to restrain the urge. He and Sylvain squabbling was nothing new, but he didn’t like the idea of Dimitri seeing him like this.

Besides, Felix thought, some of the information had finally begun to percolate. What was Sylvain doing messing around with the wife of a Knight of Seiros? Who was right now probably with the archbishop at the strange excavation in Hrym?

“So he doesn’t want company?” Nell continued, looking sourly at Felix.

“He’s got company,” Sylvain said with a smirk, “he’s got us. Old friends, from the cradle if you can believe it. Just like you and Anya.”

“Anya?” Nell looked immediately suspicious. “Since when do you talk to Anya?”

She leapt to her feet, making Sylvain lurch and spill a few drops of wine onto his trousers. 

“Wait, no, never,” Sylvain immediately objected, getting up to pursue her as Nell fled back to the bar, “I’m just a great listener, that’s all!”

Without Sylvain and Nell to bicker, they lapsed into uncomfortable silence.

Dimitri drummed his fingers absently on the table. Felix continued to search the room with his eyes, although he could scarcely pay attention to anything outside of Dimitri, looming in his peripheral vision.

“It’s odd,” Dimitri finally said, apparently needing to break the silence. “We really haven’t done anything like this in years. There always seems to be too much work.”

Felix finally turned to look at him directly. His intuition was beginning to suggest another possibility. Dimitri was right, after all. After the academy, they had never really managed to become friends again.

“And is this…” Felix finally asked, “work?”

Dimitri instinctively pulled his lips into an empty looking smile. But to his credit, he didn’t try to lie.

“In a way,” Dimitri admitted. “I have been feeling… distant lately. From the people who I am supposed to be protecting. My council brings reports of unrest caused by Crest Eradicationists, but if Dorothea really has come to Fhirdiad, then I can’t help but wonder if it is more than that.”

“If this is a mission, we should have brought Ingrid,” Felix remarked.

Strangely, he felt a sense of relief to know that this was the reason why Dimitri had accepted Sylvain’s ludicrous invitation. It had not been defiant anger at him that made Dimitri endanger himself, it had been that same foolish idealism that had always sent Dimitri to the frontlines of battles. 

“She might not like to witness this,” Dimitri said, sparing a glance for Sylvain, who was now on his knees, pleading with Nell.

“He was never this bad before, right?” Felix snorted. “I can’t tell if I’ve just forgotten the worst purposefully.”

“I don’t believe he was,” Dimitri said. Felix felt a prickle of something beneath those mild words. There was something Dimitri wasn’t voicing there.

“Ingrid would have set him right,” Felix said with a short nod. “And she wants to do more.”

“More than turn the poorest province in Fódlan into a livable place again?” Dimiti asked.

“You know what I mean,” Felix sighed. “She wants a knighthood. A position of note. Not simply to be the more competent shadow of her father and her brothers.” 

“I worry that I have not made a place for her,” Dimitri agreed. “I know that her duties have inevitably tied her to family, home, and the soil of Galatea, but I wish there was a way for her to be more.”

Felix said nothing, although he remembered the hurt in Ingrid’s face when she’d realized that they hadn’t informed her about the assassination attempt prior to the council meeting.

It had been a delicate political matter, Felix rationalized, and then immediately reminded himself that during the war, there had never been any question about informing Ingrid about equally sensitive issues.

“I know I often mismanage things,” Dimitri said quietly after a short pause. “I am trying to do better, I swear it, Felix. I do not mean to force you into so many difficult positions with my thoughtless words.”

Felix felt a flare of hot rage. His eyes narrowed and he saw Dimitri’s lips press together, clearly aware that he’d just said something that Felix was about to tear to shreds. Felix stopped himself, wrestled mentally for a few moments. He couldn’t afford to say something he didn’t mean right now.

“I—” he finally began. Every word felt like it was scalding the inside of his mouth. “I am the one who has been acting badly. Idiot. No, wait. Don’t listen to that part. I just… you frustrate me. You insist on taking the blame when I’m the one having foolish outbursts.”

“Felix, I understand,” Dimitri immediately began to shake his head. “Please, believe me when I tell you that I understand why you, why anyone who fought in the war, can be so vigilant while I appear incautious.”

“You don’t understand,” Felix growled. Of course Dimitri would attempt to excuse Felix’s behavior. “I am… worried. About… you.”

He felt like he wanted to throw himself down a flight of stairs and then vanish into a cold bog, never to be seen again.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri apologized, infuriatingly. “I never meant to cause you harm, Felix.”

“No, stop it, stop it!” Felix demanded, struggling to keep his voice low. “It isn’t you, Dimitri. It’s… I’m supposed to be your Shield. I _chose_ that. And then I failed. When you were poisoned, Dimitri, when you nearly died, I led to that. I picked a fight with the entire west and then I wasn’t careful enough after. So just… just don’t think that when I’m like this, it’s because I’m blaming you. I’m just trying not to fail again. That’s all.”

Dimitri fell silent. It was hard to tell in the low flicker of candlelight, but Felix thought that there was a muscle twitching in his jaw. He looked like Felix had struck him.

“Felix…” Dimitri finally spoke, his voice weak. “You mustn’t ever think that. You cannot control who wants to poison me. You have _never_ failed me. Never.”

Felix stared at him, completely baffled. How could he say that when Felix could probably draw up an itemized list of the ways that he had repeatedly failed Dimitri?

“I should have known!” Nell’s voice cut through Felix’s focus and he realized with a start that he’d grown so caught up in trying to talk to Dimitri that he’d neglected everything else in the room. “You’re just another nobleman, never looking for anything serious!”

“Nell, you’re the one who’s married!” Sylvain balked. There was a red handprint on his cheek.

But now other people from the tavern were paying attention.

“Go back to Gautier with Anya then!” Nell shouted at him. “And take your twitchy little nobleman friend with you. Burn a pamphlet press, or whatever your type does for fun!

“Burn a what?” Felix said, disgruntled to have been drawn into the quarrel.

“Fire started in Blount’s Press just last week,” one of the delver’s suddenly spoke. His hands were gnarled, dark lines of dirt soaked into the cracks in his skin. He had a decidedly unfriendly smile as he turned on his stool to face Felix. “Who coulda done such a thing, little lordling?”

“Blount,” Felix repeated, putting something together, “who prints the Crest Eradicationist pamphlets.”

“That he did,” the delver nodded with a widening of his grin. “Burnt up alongside his pamphlets, I’m afraid. No witnesses. Odd, given the King’s Guard was set up right across the lane. Must have all been asleep, I suppose.”

“The guard would not allow a building to burn unchecked in the city,” Felix argued. “Even if they did despise what was being published.”

“How about the court mages then?” another man cut in, from a different table. He was a broad fellow with a burn up his neck which suggested a bad brush with dark magic during the war. “Was what happened to Master Latimer just another little mistake?”

“I don’t know who—” Felix began, resisting the urge to argue when he was this badly outnumbered. Even the finest swordsman, he knew, could be overwhelmed by a mob of untrained civilians if they threw enough rocks.

“Poor Master Latimer thought himself very lucky to get his chance to run for the Grand Assembly. Nice fellow, and a guild member too,” the man with the burn continued. “He had a nice little following for an Uncrested commoner until, would you believe it? Struck by a thunderbolt on a clear day. Right at the gates of the Royal School of Sorcery.”

“I know nothing of it,” Felix insisted. “If you’re angry, then cast your vote for another.”

“Answer for the king’s tax collectors then,” a woman added. She was young and her light brown skin and pale hair marked her as having some heritage in Duscur. “Why do they wait outside of the polls? Why do the poor go to mark their choice and leave with empty pockets? How can we vote your filth out if the whole thing is nothing but a sham to pacify us?”

“If that happens, then tell the king,” Felix insisted, “and let him fix it.”

“Tell the king?” the woman laughed. “Tell the king when it is _his_ guards and _his_ mages and _his_ ministers who are working against us?”

The mood was souring quickly, Felix realized.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Sylvain announced. “Mistress Tippler, my room upstairs, please, before I vomit on your fine patrons.”

Mistress Tippler handed him a key as he spilled his coins all over the counter and then scrambled to collect them.

Felix cast Dimitri an urgent look, hoping that he would see the wisdom in leaving quickly. But Dimitri had an extremely troubling look on his face.

“The tax collectors,” he asked urgently. “They wear the royal livery?”

“Should they be hiding it?” the woman asked with a bitter laugh.

“Are they local men?” Dimitri pressed her. “Has anyone seen their faces before?”

The woman tilted her head, curls of white shifting against her shoulders as she examined Dimitri.

Felix got his feet abruptly, the scrape of his stool the only sound in the now deadly silent room.

“I’ve finished my drink,” Felix said pointedly, and then looked sharply at Dimitri.

“Ah, lordling, certainly you can afford another?” the delver said with his nasty grin growing wider. “Are you really so afraid of a few questions?”

Felix grabbed the strap of Dimitri’s pauldron and then yanked him to his feet roughly.

“I know you,” the woman said slowly.

“That’s Fraldarius!” a voice called out from behind him.

Felix couldn’t make out who had shouted, as everyone in the tavern was now on their feet, but the voice was oddly familiar.

“Please,” Dimitri began to speak, raising his hands. “We mean you no harm.”

“Fraldarius, huh?” the man with the burn said with a scowl. “The king’s attack dog? I believe we have a friend who might like to speak with you.”

“You’re mistaken,” Felix said, his back to Dimitri now as the crowd circled closer.

“I’ve always heard Fraldarius was a little one,” the burned man said. “Tell me, did you command your soldiers to seize the inheritance of any child whose father sided with the Dukedom before or after your own was cold in the ground?”

Without even thinking, Felix felt his sword sliding from its sheath. 

“I never—” he began, his heart pounding so hard felt it in every finger.

“Take him to Arnault!” that strangely familiar voice called from the crowd. “Seize him!”

The crowd surged forward. Felix grabbed for Dimitri and saw that he stood frozen. He’d drawn no weapon. Instead, he was just staring blankly, his mouth slightly open.

Felix felt a freezing jolt of fear run up his spine. He recognized that face. Dimitri was seeing someone familiar in that crowd. Someone Felix never could see. One of his unquiet dead had come.

Behind them, there was an enormous crash. An entire barrel of dark ale had exploded and Sylvain was lying, stunned and soaked, beside it.

“For your trouble!” he slurred, flinging his purse over his shoulder. Then he sprinted up the stairs.

Felix grabbed Dimitri by the hand and pulled him after Sylvain. He managed to catch up a stool and fling it down behind him, slowing the pursuers who had to clamber over it to give chase.

The upper floor of the tavern was a long hallway, but Felix saw Sylvain unlocking one of the doors at the end of the hall with surprising dexterity for a drunk man. Felix yanked Dimitri in that direction and Sylvain slammed the door behind them and locked it as soon as Dimitri was clear of the threshold.

“Barricade,” Felix commanded.

Then he realized that he was still holding Dimitri’s hand and leapt away with a flinch. He hid the burning on his face by turning around focusing his efforts on shoving the bed in front of the door. His palm felt very warm.

Dimitri seemed to have snapped out of his fugue and easily lifted the enormous wooden wardrobe in front of the doorway as well.

In the meantime, Sylvain had been prying the window open.

“Good thing she gave me my usual,” Sylvain said with a smirk. “Believe me, this isn’t the first time I’ve been chased out of this place by a mob. Usually more angry husbands are involved, though.”

He ducked through the window and stepped easily out onto the roof of the next building, which was pressed up right against the tavern. Thank the goddess for overcrowding in Old Fhirdiad, Felix thought, and followed after. 

“This way!” Sylvain called merrily. “There’s a watchtower for the guard just a few streets over.”

“No!” Dimitri said firmly. His hair was blowing about his face up on the rooftop by night. In the dark with that armor, his silhouette was uncomfortably similar to the wild boar prince who had roamed the forests of western Faerghus for years, the one that local peasants still called the great black wolf. But his voice sounded clear. “Do not involve the city watchmen.”

“Dimitri, they’re going to drag you off to Dorothea!” Felix said in disbelief.

His chest was tightening again. He tried to draw a deep breath, but it wouldn’t come. Why did this keep happening, right when it was least convenient? He needed to stay focused, as he always had been in battle. Until recently, when apparently he’d softened back into a panicked child whenever he drew his blade.

“Those people have been deceived,” Dimitri insisted, gesturing back to the tavern. “It would be arrogant to assume that I might not have been also.”

Sylvain smiled tightly.

“The market, then,” Sylvain said. “Let’s get ourselves lost.”

He vaulted over the peak of the roof. Dimitri followed and Felix managed to make it, even with the painful pressure than seemed to be bearing down on his sternum.

They made it a few streets over before Sylvain lowered himself down from a balcony and let himself fall to the ground. Felix could hear shouting from the direction of the tavern still. Soon enough, there would be pursuers.

Blindly, he followed Sylvain through a twist of dark narrow streets until suddenly they were flung out into a busy boulevard. Carriages thundered up and down the roads, doors were open, vendors sold food, and music floated across the path from a woman playing a viol on the corner.

Sylvain slowed his pace at once, and then doubled back to jerk Felix’s hood up and over his head.

“Hand off the hilt,” he muttered in Felix’s ear and Felix managed to pry his fingers off of the sword at his side. Then he gave Felix a little pat on the cheek that made him wish to reach for the weapon again.

“He’s not actually drunk,” Felix whispered, drawing level with Dimitri again as they pressed their way through the crowded street.

Dimitri nodded absently, although he appeared lost in his own thoughts. Every look, every brush of a stranger’s shoulder, every clatter of a cart, made Felix tense his shoulders tighter.

“You saw something back there. What?” Felix finally demanded as they were nearing the end of the long boulevard and began to climb back towards the palace.

“It was nothing,” Dimitri said with a pained shake of his head.

“Who?” Felix said, refusing to back down.

Dimitri turned to look at him, shame written on every feature. Felix wavered for a moment. He shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t force the issue when Dimitri had no interest in sharing his condition with someone who had openly derided it for years.

“One of my usual,” Dimitri finally said, his voice quiet. “Not… not the new one.”

“New one?” Felix demanded.

“I’m used to it, I can handle seeing Glenn,” Dimitri said awkwardly, as though it pained him to admit it, although Felix had clearly overheard enough of his mad pleading to know the truth. “Sometimes now, I see Edelgard as well."

Felix wanted to scream at him, to command him not to see the dead emperor’s face, as though he could somehow convince Dimitri with his words that his step-sister had no reason to haunt him. But he didn’t. Not this time.

“But you’re… alright?” Felix said, his words stilted and rough. Dimitri narrowed his eye.

“I am not beholden to those visions anymore,” he said, as though attempting to reassure Felix. Which was ridiculous. And idiotic. Because Felix did not need any reassuring when he was trying to check if the man who literally hallucinated ghosts was alright.

“Don’t,” Felix said, speeding up and walking a few paces in front of Dimitri now.

“Don’t?” Dimitri asked, catching up with only a few irritatingly long strides.

“You’re acting like I need consoling,” Felix snapped. “I don’t. I’m not frightened by it. As long as you know what is real now, it’s fine.”

“Felix, I am not trying to insult you,” Dimitri said urgently, “but you are… this has upset you. I know that you’re strong, but sometimes I see that you are grieving and I don’t know how to help and then—”

“I’m not grieving,” Felix cut him off. “Grieving what? Grieving my damned full cup I left behind in that wretched tavern?”

“We haven’t ever spoken of it, but I still worry about…” Dimitri took a deep breath, “about that night after the battle at Gronder. When I—”

“Enough,” Felix said harshly.

He really couldn’t breathe now. It felt like there was water rushing past his ears. The street under his feet seemed to be warping strangely.

“I think that I hurt you that night, in a way I don’t understand,” Dimitri continued stubbornly. “And even now, we haven’t… we haven’t found a way to be friends again because that pain has festered.”

“Enough!” Felix repeatedly.

He paused, forced to lean against a building to support himself. His lungs refused to draw a breath. It had to be poison, Felix thought. He hadn’t touched the wine, though. It must have been from something else. Powder in one of his letters maybe. Incense sent through his vents.

He heard Dimitri say something else although the words sounded muffled. Felix looked up.

And caught a glimpse. There. Backing into the crowd behind them.

He raised a finger and pointed. Needed someone else to see before it vanished.

Backing into the crowd was a figure in a white mask. Up close, Felix recognized it. A white mask, painted with black curls of fire. A scorched parody of something horribly familiar. They were being watched by a risen Flame Emperor.

Then his vision darkened and he felt himself sway and a pair of arms closed around him, cradling him, pressing his head into worn leather, soft golden hair, warm skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pour one out for Felix and his brocaded vest


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mention of offscreen animal death, gaslighting

_“Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth woh;_

_Erthe other erthe to the erthe droh;_

_Erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh;_

_Tho hevede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.”_

_\--anon_

Dimitri stood up from his desk and began to pace. He ran a hand through his hair. He ran a hand through it again. He grabbed a fistful of it and pulled, strands spilling down over his face like it had before, before when he was…

Dimitri kept pacing. He looked at the desk again. It was piled with letters and reports and things that should be helping him make sense of things.

Nothing made sense.

His stomach hurt, not the nauseated churning of the council meeting, but a deep ache. He scratched at his collar, pulling it aside, irritating the skin further as he scratched at his neck hard enough to leave marks.

_Calm yourself._

Dimitri whirled around. Edelgard was standing by the bookcase. Her chest was stained with blood today, red soaking into red.

“Go away,” Dimitri muttered, squeezing his eye shut.

He was getting worse, he realized. He was talking to Edelgard now.

And at the tavern, he’d frozen, his eyes locked with the mocking face of Glenn in the crowd. It had smiled at him, a ghastly grin amidst the faces of the angry people.

They were so real to him. So real he was starting to worry that he couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

_You’re missing something. Something you should remember._

“Be silent,” Dimitri said, his whisper shaking slightly.

With his eyes closed he could only see Felix. Felix with his face so pale, his pupils dilated, fighting through his panic until he’d fainted into Dimitri’s arms.

By the time they had made it to the palace gates, he’d been mostly standing on his own again. And it had been Sylvain who’d soothed the guards' worries, proclaiming that Duke Fraldarius couldn’t hold his liquor and helping him off to bed.

All because Dimitri had wanted no further outcry that could incite more violence.

And so Dimitri was here, pacing his office the next morning, when all he wanted to do was go speak to the healers and ensure that Felix was well. He’d been given assurances that there was no sign of any medical problem, no poison or toxin. But that did not set his mind at ease. If anything, it made the problem worse.

Dimitri had spent time with the men and women who suffered from battle shock. He’d sat with people like Janine and Maxim, previously taken into the church’s keeping when their friends and families could no longer handle the nightmares, the obsessions, the silence, or the paranoia.

Dimitri had listened to them, smiling sympathetically, the perfect image of the compassionate monarch, when all he truly wanted to say was that he felt the same most days.

It seemed absurd to even think it. He was mistaken, certainly. Worse, he was projecting, trying to drag Felix down to his level.

But if there was a tiny chance that he was right, that Felix fought with his hand shaking on his blade and heart tight in his chest, it was surely Dimitri’s fault.

What was it that he had said as he’d forced himself, exhausted, to trail after Dimitri? That he’d failed in his duty as a Shield when Dimitri had been poisoned?

Felix had no idea how deeply wrong he was. How much Dimitri was the one who had failed him. How Dimitri was dragging him down into the darkness with him, all for the sake of a tiny bit of comfort.

Dimitri sat in his chair again heavily, the frantic energy draining from him. Slowly, he brought his head down and rested it on the pile of papers.

 _Look closer,_ Edelgard whispered in his ear, sending a shiver through his entire body, _remember. Who was it truly, disappearing into the flames?_

Dimitri did not reply to her this time, but he did raise his head. This might be worse, he thought wryly, listening to the ghosts instead of merely speaking to them.

The mess on his desk was comprised of everything his ministers and clerks could find on the Blount Press fire, on Master Latimer’s strange death by lightning strike, and even on Fhirdiad’s municipal records of tax collection. Somewhere, there had to be an answer that he was missing.

There was a report from a guard captain about the fire, stating that a patrol had arrived, seen locals attempting to stop the burning, and assisted with safely putting it out and cleaning off the street. Nothing seemed unusual about that. Dimitri even recognized the name of the guard captain, a veteran of the war who’d fought in a battalion under Sylvain’s command.

He had read several accounts of the death of Master Armand Latimer, a local guildsman whose death had occurred on the same street as the Royal School of Sorcery, although no report mentioned that it had been right at their gates. Lightning on a clear day was strange, but not unheard of.

Finally, the muddle of Fhirdiad’s taxes was nearly impenetrable to him.

Dimitri thought desperately back to his years of royal tutors assuring him that his relatively slow mathematical mind would be easily compensated by the many clerks who could take care of such matters for him. He stared down at the columns of sums, unsure how to even begin to check if the numbers were reasonable.

Felix, his mind supplied unbidden, Felix had been the one with a talent for numbers. As children, when Dimitri was frustrated or despairing over some problem his tutors had set him to, Felix had always tried to whisper the answer in his ear or pass it to him on a note. Felix had gotten himself struck over the knuckles several times for it when he’d been caught.

The numbers blurred in his vision and Dimitri put his head into his hands for a moment.

A memory swam to the surface of his mind unbidden. His tutor’s chambers, the old woman nodding off over her desk, Dimitri staring down at the slate in front of him, chalk trembling in his hand because he was a prince and that meant that he wasn’t allowed to cry over sums.

And then Felix, Felix’s head at the window, a shy grin on his face as he squinted through the glass and held up his fingers. Dimitri had written the answer on his slate with such relief that the chalk had exploded in his grip.

“It’s as Gustave said,” the old tutor had lamented, trying to wipe the powder from his sleeves, “you break everything you touch, Your Highness.”

Dimitri had kept his eyes away from the window, giving Felix plenty of time to escape. Not everything, he’d thought at the time, not everything that he touched.

Not yet, at least.

Someone else needed to do this, Dimitri thought, staring down at the column of numbers. He ought to send for the archbishop and allow the church to sort out his mess yet again.

The archbishop, he realized, scrabbling beneath the piles of parchment now spread across the desk. Ashe had sent another letter that one of his attendants had delivered that morning and he hadn’t thought to open it.

He slit the wax seal and skimmed over Ashe’s words.

_‘The excavation grows stranger with each level of the city we exhume. Its arcane lights appear to function normally, although the halls are abandoned. The archbishop theorizes that they must be similar to the unusual chambers we found below the monastery in the Holy Tomb._

_I must also report that there have been a few more bodies discovered, although these are in a far more unusual condition. Rather than the mages we discovered in the upper level, these bodies appear to have been suspended in a form of embalming fluid for quite some time. Many show signs of odd deformity. The archbishop noted one of these bodies, a shriveled creature with great empty black eyes, as reminiscent of the man we knew as Solon. I shudder to imagine more of his sort. For my part, it reminds me of the story of Loog and the Silent Watcher, the chivalric tale concerning the origins of Pan, a figure not often written about due to his lack of known exploits._

_And of course, I cannot help but think of the strange mages in the mist that night on the Magdred Way. I apologize, Your Majesty, but I still find my thoughts drawing back to that night no matter what I do.’_

A knock at the door of his study interrupted Dimitri from reading further. 

He glanced up sharply. How long had it been? He was probably late for something. His eye felt sore and burned with fatigue as he looked blurrily to the door.

“Your Majesty,” his attendant called through the wood, “it is Margrave Gautier, here to speak with you, as requested.”

Dimitri lurched to his feet, desperately tried to tidy the desk, and then scraped what he hoped was most of his hair back from his face. His smile faltered a few times on his lips before it settled and he opened the door.

“Margrave Gautier,” he said as pleasantly as he could, “forgive me for keeping you waiting. Many matters have required my attention this morning.”

Margrave Gautier did not appear resentful for the short wait as the attendant stepped back to allow him in. He wore a thin, burgundy overcoat, slightly clashing with his rust colored hair and beard.

“Your Majesty,” he replied, bowing with the robust grace of an older man who still took care to keep his limbs strong. “I hope I can be of service. I recognize that you have many difficult decisions before you right now.”

Dimitri invited the Margrave to sit and then sank back into the chair behind his desk. It looked even messier now somehow.

“While there are certainly some upcoming issues to be solved, I called for your company today to assist me with a somewhat older matter,” Dimitri said, quickly sorting through the piles of ledgers to find the correct one. “Gautier was one of the few territories to successfully resist the Dukedom during the war. I am curious as to some of the lands that House Gautier acquired during that time.”

“You are speaking of the Belinus lands, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier nodded. His posture was easy, confidant, showing no sign of guilt or discomfort.

“I am,” Dimitri confirmed. “There have been reports, very damaging rumors which had eroded the trust of the people, concerning the seizing of estates belonging to those impressed into service to the Dukedom. So it apparently happened in Fraldarius territory. I am curious to understand why something similar seems to have occurred in Gautier.”

“A simple explanation, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier nodded. “The family lines lapsed. Some of the Belinus heirs served the Dukedom and paid with their lives, but the title reverted to House Gautier only when Rochelle Belinus died of the summer pox.”

“I see,” Dimitri said cautiously. “You understand how this might cause unrest among the people?”

“If I may speak frankly, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier said, his tone warm but firm, almost fatherly, “do you understand the unrest it might cause among the barons if you were to deny their rights to territories that they themselves awarded to their own vassals generations ago?”

“I am not asking you to surrender your rights,” Dimitri said forcefully. “I am merely hoping to make you see the ways in which we continue to lose the faith of the common people, demonstrating to them again and again that those in power seek only to enrich themselves at the expense of their rivals.”

“Then we are in agreement,” Margrave Gautier said with a gentle smile finally breaking across his stern face. “Your Majesty, I have already proposed the construction of a new university on the Belinus estate, with all profits from the surrounding lands going to the support of the school.”

Dimitri glanced down at the ledger again. He suddenly felt foolish, needlessly paranoid, striking out at his best allies instead of trusting them. His mind made him see traitors in every shadow, twisting coincidence and the natural antagonism of politics into a vast conspiracy. Just as he had been during the war.

“Forgive me,” Dimitri finally said. “I did not mean to question your honor as protector of Gautier.”

“Your Majesty, if I may continue to speak informally, I know that you do not have great love for me,” Margrave Gautier said abruptly. Dimitri’s face spasmed into an impulsive smile. The man was certainly blunt. “It does not shame me. I recognize that my actions have not always been aligned with your beliefs.”

“If you are referring to the incident with Miklan—” Dimitri began, but Margrave Gautier shook his head.

“Miklan, yes,” he confirmed, “but also with my other son, Sylvian. I understand that he is a dear friend of yours, and while he and I have always agreed where it mattered most, I know he thinks me callous in how I have handled the business of his Crest.”

“I…” Dimitri began. The secrets and silences crowded onto his tongue.

“You need not deny it for the sake of my service,” Margrave Gautier held up his hands. “I will not attempt to excuse myself. Some of my choices have been poor ones. I must bear that responsibility. I only ask that you remember the one aspect of my life that I have no cause to feel shame for. That I have _never_ wavered in my loyalty to Faerghus.”

Dimitri nodded. He felt the shaky walls he’d managed to throw up crumbling. He was is no condition for this today. If Dedue had been here, he would have seen the signs, cancelled Dimitri’s meetings, sent him out to ride or speak with Mercedes to clear his head. Pathetic, he thought bitterly, that he could barely manage a few weeks on his own without Dedue to mind him.

“Margrave Gautier…” he finally said, unable to hold it back any further. “If I… If you thought me unfit to rule, would you turn against me? For the sake of Faerghus?”

A strange look crossed over the Margrave’s face.

“Your Majesty,” he said slowly, “if I thought you unfit, I would never have sent my troops to Enbarr at your side.”

“Yes, but Margrave, there is no war now,” Dimitri insisted. “Without such a threat, does Faerghus truly need such a terrible weapon?”

“Do not doubt yourself, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier said, suddenly reaching out and placing his hand over Dimitri’s where it rested on the desk. Dimitri jumped at the slight pressure, although he wore sturdy gloves. “Do not allow the words of those seeking to undermine you to succeed in breaking your confidence when you know your path and you know your beliefs. Do not give in so easily.”

“And if…” Dimitri took a deep breath. “If I don’t know? If I am uncertain about my path?”

The Margrave withdrew his hand.

“You likely know this better than I, but I believe my son is in a similar position,” the Margrave admitted. “Sylvain has been lost to me for a long time now. He knows his duty, but he does not know his heart. I will give you the same advice, Your Majesty, that I would give my son, although he would never ask.”

The Margrave paused here, his stoic, serious face showing an uncharacteristic hesitancy.

“Doubt is an insidious weed. The daggers we give in Faerghus cut our paths by cutting through our doubts. You have not forgotten your beliefs, only allowed them to be smothered by these grasping vines. Cut them away. And then your path will lie before you.”

Dimitri took a shallow breath and held it. He felt that he should say something here, take the opening that Margrave Gautier had given him to be truthful, to declare that he did not trust his own people, or more specifically, his own lords.

And to explain that it terrified him, because if his lords rebelled, then he would have to suppress another uprising, and the last time had nearly destroyed what little of his humanity had remained after Duscur.

He wanted to say to the Margrave that the idea of once again being betrayed might finally kill him, or at least, leave nothing but a frothing, furious boar in his place.

Instead, he swallowed back his words.

“Thank you for your guidance, Margrave,” he said graciously. “I hope that you will inform the rest of the Lords Assembly that the king urges his barons not to provoke undue strife at such a tense time. Now, I am meant to walk the grounds for an hour, I believe, for my health.”

“Very good, Your Majesty,” Margrave Gautier replied, getting to his feet and bowing at the waist. “To your health.”

As he left, Dimitri took a moment to chew his bottom lip. He wasn’t sure of anything today. He didn’t want to look behind him and see the mess on his desk again, the clear evidence of his fracturing mind reading too much into a few, unconnected incidents. They had been unfortunate accidents, but he feared his thoughts would eventually connect them into some great and insidious tapestry again.

Worry about doing no more harm in the future, he told himself firmly, instead of letting the past rule your every action. It would be what Felix would tell him to do.

Before leaving, he returned to his desk and scribbled out a quick note.

“Have this taken to the Royal School of Sorcery,” he instructed Étienne Charon, one of his more curious attendants, and handed him the note.

He left to walk the grounds. It was hot again, and the sun felt merciless against the stones of the courtyard.

His attendants followed him to the shade of the gardens instead, but it did little to help. The heat was thick and oppressive even beneath the branches of fruit trees. They needed a storm to clear it, but instead, the pressure sat over the city like pestle grinding down into a bowl.

As much as it annoyed him to admit it, taking his daily stroll did help. Normally, Dedue would be with him, quiet and yet companionable. They might make small observations to one another about which trees would put out fruit or where birds might be nesting.

Today, however, he walked in silence, but for the plodding steps of his ever-present attendants, lingering at a respectful distance.

After nearly an hour, Dimitri was beginning to find the quiet unnerving, when he suddenly did notice another sound. It was a small sound, high and gasping. Someone was crying.

Turning, he drew aside a cascade of wisteria, and then he saw her.

It was Marianne von Edmund. She was sitting at the base of a tree, her knees drawn up, a crumpled letter in her hand. Her face looked red and blotchy, as though she’d already been crying for a while.

He glanced over her shoulder, unsure if he ought to withdraw and give her privacy. Before he could, she looked up, saw him, and froze.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, taking a handkerchief from her sleeve and beginning to dry her eyes. “I’m disturbing you.”

“No, I’m afraid I have once again barged in on you,” Dimitri fumbled. “Are you alright?”

Marianne nodded wordlessly. But a few more tears dripped down from her eyes.

“It’s silly,” she finally said. “It’s just… my horse, Dorte. He…”

She broke off, unable to speak. Dimitri took a few cautious steps forward and then knelt beside her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know there was nothing I could have done, I know he was older, but it was so sudden, I thought he was healthy, but—” Marianne shook her head, pressing the handkerchief desperately against her eyes.

“It feels terrible,” Dimitri agreed. “I know.”

Marianne looked up at that.

“You aren’t going to tell me to cheer up?” she asked. “Stop making such an ordeal over a horse?”

“Dorte was a wonderful horse, from what I recall. And you loved him very dearly,” Dimitri said. “What will it help to tell you not to mourn him?”

“I feel…” Marianne said very quietly. “So helpless, sometimes. Like I can’t do anything at all to stop terrible things from happening. And then I think… what is the point of… of me… if I can’t…”

Dimitri knelt beside her as she began to cry quietly again after that. He wanted so badly to say that he often felt the same. But to say it, say it particularly to Margrave Edmund’s daughter…

“You gave him a good life,” Dimitri finally said. “I believe that is something. And your memories, I hope, will stop hurting so much one day.”

He felt a burning acidic sensation of loathing in his throat as he gave her nothing but empty platitudes. What a coward he was these days.

“I ought to return to my father,” Marianne said, sniffing and beginning to rise to her feet. Dimitri steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “I’m so sorry for disturbing you.”

“Please,” Dimitri said, “allow me to escort you back to Margrave Edmund.”

Marianne gave him a tiny nod, attempting to clean up her face with what remained dry on her handkerchief. Dimitri hastily handed her his own, although she held up a startled hand to refuse.

“I couldn’t—”

“Please, I have hundreds.

As they passed from the shade of garden and back towards the royal court, where Margrave Edmund would be overseeing the office of charters, Dimitri heard a few whispers breaking out among his attendants. He set his face as neutrally as possible. These days he could not so much as look at a young lady without hearing rumors of his impending nuptials the next day

However, as they approached, Dimitri spotted the tall, grey head of Margrave Edmund standing outside of the doors to the hall, apparently having stepped out for a private conversation. And standing right beside him was…

“Felix.”

Felix barely spared him a glance.

“Dimitri.”

“Marianne?” said Margrave Edmund with some confusion.

“I’m sorry,” said Marianne.

For a moment, the four of them all fell silent, looking at one another in confusion.

“You were to be attending music lessons with Lady Gideon,” Margrave Edmund finally said.

“I know. I got a letter, and… father, please, I would like to return home,” Marianne said with a flush of shame.

“Why are you here?” Dimitri asked Felix. “The healers instructed you to rest.”

“I’ve rested,” Felix said coldly. “Now I’m here. Working.

“Felix—” Dimitri began, all of his frustration from the long and difficult morning spilling into his words.

“We’re in the middle of something,” Felix interrupted, gesturing to Margrave Edmund.

“I must borrow Duke Fraldarius for a moment, I’m afraid,” Dimitri said, watching Felix glower as Dimitri dared to use his royal authority. Margrave Edmund nodded with his usual elegance.

“Very well, Your Majesty,” he said, then nodded to Felix as well. “Your Grace, you may find me this evening at my city household if you wish, but I am afraid the guard captain in question has since retired. The reports on the fire should be sufficient.”

Felix whirled on Dimitri as soon as the Margrave was gone.

“My study,” Dimitri said firmly before he could speak. if Felix was in the mood for a fight, let it at least be behind closed doors so that every servant in the palace wasn’t whispering the next day about the royal chancellor falling from favor. 

Felix shut his mouth and followed. Dimitri felt an overheated sick sensation starting in his chest. His forehead was dampening with sweat and he felt twitchy and misaligned somehow.

It was as if he knew that this would be a bad fight. That it would be more than one of their frequent enough debates or squabbles over policy.

“Leave us,” Dimitri said to his attendants before they could attempt to wait in the antechamber. They obeyed, and Dimitri caught several nervous glances. With Étienne Charon still gone, Dimitri hoped that he would catch none of them listening at the keyhole.

Felix shut the door to the study harder than he needed to and then glanced at Dimitri’s mess of a desk with derision. He looked alright, no sign of fever or exhaustion in his face. His clothes were impeccably neat.

“What are you doing?” Felix spoke first, his voice low and vicious.

“I could say the same,” Dimitri replied. His head was spinning as he tried to find the words he meant this time, not something new to deepen the wound between them. “You were supposed to rest today, Felix. You fainted. You need to take better care—”

“I was drugged,” Felix shot back. “And now I’m fine.”

“What was the toxin, then?” Dimitri demanded. “What did the healers say?”

“Untraceable. They were… unfamiliar with it,” Felix said shortly, turning to stare resolutely at the window. Dimitri let his eyes trace Felix’s sharp profile, stay fixed for a moment on the strand of hair that had escaped just behind his ear.

Felix, for all his efforts, was a terrible liar.

“Or could you allow for the possibility that you fainted from… from exhaustion?” Dimitri offered. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

Felix turned back to look at him with disgust in his expression.

“I am not a child,” he hissed. “I can fulfill the responsibilities that I have chosen. I don’t need your _help_ when look at the state that you’re in!”

“My state?” Dimitri asked incredulously.

“You look awful,” Felix said bluntly. “Your study is a mess. You rush out to empty your stomach in the middle of meetings and you freeze in front of a hostile crowd. If you don’t stop and let me handle this, then you are going to lose your mind again and we both know what happens then.”

“You don’t understand,” Dimitri said, his voice shaking despite himself. “You don’t… I have to do something, Felix. I _have_ to.”

“Fine, then undo it all!” Felix was shouting now. “Tear it all down for the sake of your pride and go back to how you used to be!”

“Felix, please,” Dimitri said, struggling to keep his voice down, “I don’t want to fight with you. I know how you feel about me, but—”

Felix suddenly went still, his face frozen in an expression of actual fear.

“I suppose, we ought to stop pretending then,” Dimitri said finally, “and be honest with each other for the first time in years.”

“You…” Felix said, folding his arms in front of his chest as though he could physically restrain himself from speaking anymore.

“Felix, you were my first…” Dimitri did not know how to finish the sentence.

First friend. First kiss. First love. First heartbreak. First person to ever see the horrible creature he had started to become after Duscur.

First person to possibly believe he could be better.

That night. Goddess above, that night in the rain. Byleth had led him from the stables like a child, terrified and shaking and desperately tired.

He’d tried to clean himself up, tried with trembling hands to rinse the blood off. He’d tried to sleep, but it was pointless, not when he could feel himself _becoming_ something

Metamorphosis was painful and lonely and the weight of how deep he had fallen, how long and impossible the climb back up had seemed, was crushing him.

But when he’d gone to the cathedral, to stand before the rubble as the rain dripped through the shattered roof, there was Felix. Not sitting vigil with his father’s body. Not asleep. Waiting before the remains of the altar, head tilted back. Waiting, somehow, for him.

“Boar,” he’d said, and Dimitri did not know yet how to respond, because he still _was_ , and yet he _wasn’t;_ he was _becoming_.

When they were younger, it had been easy. Easy to take Felix’s hand, hug him close when he cried, wrap arms around him to warm him up on the foolish night when he’d nearly frozen his feet off.

But in the cathedral, it had been so difficult. Even now, Dimitri could not remember past the rapid thudding of his heart who had been the one to suddenly close the distance between them. All he remembered was the feeling of simultaneous magnetic compulsion combined with the sensation of two comets slamming into one another.

All that remained was an impact crater, a ringing in his ears, silence, and doubt.

And as much as that memory filled him with a terrified sort of hope, then there was always…

The poison. The cup rolling on the tiles. No taste, but a feeling of something heavy, syrupy in his mouth. A dark fog rising up. Then. Then Felix. Shaking his shoulders. Repeating his name, faster and faster, until it blurred into a sort of mantra.

That had been it. The door slamming shut. The real, actual end in a long string of endings.

“You were the first person to give me a second chance,” Dimitri finally said, “and then I disappointed you.”

Felix said nothing, although his jaw was working.

“I have disappointed you many, many times,” Dimitri continued. As horrible as the truth was, there was a certain relief to saying it aloud. “And I know that you still are disappointed in me. But I need you to understand that I am not trying to do any further damage. I just… I have to know the truth this time.”

“The truth,” Felix said, expressionless. His eyes flicked to the desk. “About municipal taxes?"

“About everything,” Dimitri nodded. “Even about… about what happened after Gronder. I know it still bothers you. I know it was wrong of me. I know that we had long before stopped that sort of—”

“Nothing happened,” Felix interrupted. “After Gronder.”

“I mean that night in the cathedral, when—”

“Nothing happened,” Felix repeated, slow and without feeling. “After Gronder.”

Dimitri’s words died in his throat. Doubt, again, washed over him.

Could he have…?

No. It was unthinkable. And yet… could he have imagined that as well?

 _You always forget,_ Edelgard’s voice came from behind him, _to look past how something appears on the surface._

He turned, forgetting himself for a moment, his eye meeting hers, red instead of violet now, glowing faintly in the shadow of the corner

Felix stalked back to the door and ripped it open.

But…

He stopped. His anger seemed to fizzle and melt away in an instant.

Dimitri turned to see why he had stopped and he felt a palpable warm rush of calm when he saw her.

Annette was standing in the door, wearing the elegant robes of the Royal School of Sorcery, her hand raised as though about to knock

“Hi Felix,” she said with a sunny smile. “Sorry, are you both done fighting yet?”

“You shouldn’t spy on the king’s business,” Felix growled, although it was entirely without real anger now. Annette had that effect on him

“You telling _me_ off for eavesdropping?” Annette laughed. “Besides, I’m invited. Hi, Dimitri!”

Dimitri returned her wave very weakly.

“So,” Annette said, stepping into the room and immediately taking charge. “I’ve brought the books you requested about Pan, but I am a bit curious. What exactly is so interesting to you about the legends of Agartha?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any theories?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mentions of political violence

_“Lo! which a greet thyng is affeccioun!_

_Men may dye of imaginacioun,_

_So depe may impressioun be take.”_

_–-Geoffrey Chaucer_

The crypts were the oldest part of Fhirdiad. While the new cathedral was further down in the city, the crypts lay beneath the old church on the hill, beside the palace. Even with the hot, sultry heat of summer still beating down onto the rooftops above, the underground chambers remained cool. It would have been a relief, Felix thought, apart from the circumstances.

In front of them was the great stone effigy of Loog. The sarcophagus was carved of stone, although the likeness of the ancient king had chipped away and weathered in a blur of indistinct features. At the entrance to the crypt, Felix had watched Dimitri’s eye drift to Lambert’s effigy, still crisp, clean, a good likeness, as though the man been petrified rather than mauled to an unrecognizable pulp and strewn in pieces across the roadside.

But the effigy of Loog was unique in the crypt of Fhirdiad, in that it was flanked by two other monuments. It was an honor never again granted to one outside of House Blaiddyd, to lie in eternal sleep beside the monarch.

Glenn, Felix thought with discomfort, had been buried in the city cathedral, although from what he had surmised, there had been little left to bury. Only his armor lay in the mausoleum in Fraldarius territory

On the right of Loog, Kyphon’s tomb was simple, almost deceptively plain. On the left, Pan’s grave was a mere engraved slab on the floor. And yet despite their lack of grandeur, there was a solemn power to those graves.

A solemn power made particularly perverse by the fact that Felix was in the process of prying them open.

“You got it?” Annette asked as Felix adjusted his grip on the side of the slab.

“We can manage,” Dimitri said and then Felix felt a sudden surge in the air as the Crest of Blaiddyd ripped the stone from the ground with enough force that Felix had to draw upon his own Crest to keep the thing from rocketing across the room and into the wall.

“Careful,” he said to Dimitri, tone clipped.

He and Dimitri had been communicating mainly in monosyllabic grunts and single words in the past week since their fight. Every time Felix thought about it, he felt a sickening lurch in his gut.

“Anything yet?” Annette called down as Felix dropped into the hole beneath.

“Nothing,” Felix said, examining the stones around him. He looked down at the rotted lid of the wooden coffin and then pulled it open. “Nothing at all.”

Dimitri sighed with something between frustration and relief.

“Well, that’s not exactly surprising, if a little disheartening,” Annette said, peeking down to watch as Felix examined the empty coffin. “If nothing else, it is a bit wasteful.”

“I don’t understand,” Dimitri said from above, sounding pensive, “how could a person simply erase every trace of themselves? Even their body?”

“I actually started looking into Pan right after the war ended,” Annette admitted. “Honestly, it began because of the professor. They seemed so similar; a brilliant tactician who arrives and suddenly turns the tide of a war… I thought it might be flattering, you know, to write a book or something.”

“Well, it’s going to be a short book,” Felix grumbled, hoisting himself back out of the empty grave and brushing his hands off on his trousers.

“Finding nothing, in this case, is actually more interesting than finding something,” Annette said with a determined smile. “I’ve compiled everything I could about Pan, but none of it leads to any concrete evidence that the man actually existed. For a while I considered suggesting that he was an invention of the chronicles to glorify Loog without suggesting that he ordered the Burning of the Brionic.”

“But you do not believe that?” Dimitri asked. He was still peering down into the dark below, as though transfixed by it.

“Well, I’d hate to make a suggestion without any evidence,” Annette said, finishing up her notes on the discovery and then tapping the tip of her nose with her quill. “But… the Agarthan codex had to have come from somewhere. Even if it is a hoax, full of untranslatable nonsense language, the spell runes are all perfectly functional. If Pan didn’t introduce dark magic to the Kingdom mages himself, then someone did.”

“So what now?” Felix asked impatiently. He kept his gaze on Annette, although he was speaking to Dimitri as well. “We’ve learned nothing of use. Just because the Empire used a group of mercenaries specializing in this 'Agarthan' dark magic, that doesn’t give us much to go on. In fact, the only person we even suspect _might_ have been assassinated using magic was hit by a bolt of lightning, and I think we can all recall someone more likely who specialized in such abilities.”

“Dorothea would not attack a commoner running for the Grand Assembly,” Dimitri replied.

He hadn’t stopped looking into the hole. For a moment, Felix had a sudden, irrational urge to grab him and drag him back before he let himself simply fall in.

“Dorothea Arnault is capable of a lot of things,” Felix snapped back. “Don’t assume she wouldn’t sacrifice her own people in order to further destabilize the peace. She was a Black Eagle, after all.”

Felix left the implication unspoken. The last Adrestian Emperor had few qualms about sacrificing her own soldiers. In the end, Edelgard had proven that even her own body and her own life were merely tools to further her goals. Felix had lain awake many times, head full of battles, seething over the last, spiteful dagger wound in Dimitri’s shoulder.

“We should leave,” Dimitri said, apparently refusing to acknowledge the logic of Felix’s words. “Everyone is still waiting for us outside.”

“I’ll escort you back,” Felix informed Annette, mostly eager to avoid any time spent alone with Dimitri.

“I’m not the one who’s made himself a pariah to the people of Fhirdiad,” Annette reminded him indignantly. “All of my students are talking about Duke Fraldarius and his dissolute friend starting a tavern riot.”

“Don’t care,” Felix said shortly. “Once you’re back at the Royal School of Sorcery, you can do as you please.”

They stepped out from the chapel and back into the blinding sun. Verdant Rain Moon was slipping quickly away. Every day, Felix saw pavilions being erected and rooms being prepared for the guests at the Unification Ball.

Dimitri gave Annette a brief bow as they left the church and one of his attendants handed him the reigns to his horse. Felix turned his back and mounted his own without another word.

Outside of the Royal School of Sorcery, Felix stopped to help Annette down from the back of his horse. She was looking at him with one of her strange little faces.

There had always been something about Annette and him, ever since they’d been students together. He could never seem to find it in himself to be angry with her, even when he was furious with everything else in the world.

And in return, whenever he upset her, she always seemed to be able to cut through all of his defenses and expose him as nothing but a frightened child, lashing out wildly to cover his own terror.

“What?” he finally asked as she paused at the gates, looking over her shoulder as students crossed between them on their way to the afternoon’s classes.

“Whenever you want to tell me,” Annette said very seriously, “I’m ready. I will listen, Felix.”

It would have been better if she had screamed at him, told him he was being cruel and to get over himself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly.

Annette shook her head, like she was deeply sad.

“I know you aren’t as much as a grump as you pretend to be,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him, “but right now? You and Dimitri? I’ve been stewing in this for a week now, I can tell something is off."

“You’re right,” Felix said, glowering at her. “He is off. Just like before. He gets obsessed. Spends all of his time in the library digging up old records. It’s exactly the way it was back at Garreg Mach.”

“When you’re ready, Felix,” Annette repeated seriously. “I sang for you. The least you can do is explain.”

Felix stared at her, stunned and wishing that he had the will to lash out at Annette for ignoring the very real and serious problem of their monarch’s declining grip on reality. 

For a moment, he entertained a fantasy. He allowed himself to imagine that right there, he finally let his secret go.

He would stand on the street and tell her that he kissed Dimitri when they were fourteen and grieving and far too young for such strong feelings. He would say that after a year and a half of stolen kisses, it had fallen apart. He would confess that he and Dimitri had already tried being in love and it had failed, messily, and yet no matter how much he ignored it, he couldn’t get over it.

Because as much as he tried, and he did try and _try_ , he could not just move on. He was as shackled to the past as everyone else, and in his moments of weakness, he always returned to reopen those scars. When he got desperate, Felix would tell her, he slipped back into old habits and kissed Dimitri in the pouring rain like he would drown without the brush of those familiar lips.

“Send word if you find anything else,” Felix said instead. Annette nodded silently. One of her students was waving at her from through the gate.

Felix turned his horse around to ride back to the palace. As he did, his eyes strayed to a faint discoloration on the cobbles. It was a morbid thought, but it looked something like a scorch.

And beside the mark, there was something else. A grate.

On a whim, Felix dismounted and went to examine it. From deep below the street, he could hear the sound of rushing water in the sewers that stretched beneath Fhirdiad.

Felix crouched beside it, staring down into the humid, stinking darkness. There was something wedged down there, he realized, under the grate and caught on a mass of leaves scraped only part of the way down into the drain.

Carefully, Felix reached in, stretching his arm and turning his head to the side until the bars of the grate were pressing at his shoulder. His gloved fingers grasped something smooth. It was too large to draw back through easily and caught on the bars as he attempted to pull it out.

As he looked down to inspect it, the object slipped from his fingers and clattered back down into the drain. But it didn’t matter. He’d seen it.

A mask. White as a corpse. Half of it outlined with the curling shapes of flames.

His heart began to pound. The street around him was crowded, loud, hot, filled with passing strangers. Felix felt his hand twitch towards his blade. He scanned the rooftops, the faces that filed endlessly past.

Somewhere in the busy street, a child began to cry, the unserious whining sort of cry that hot and tired children often produce. A young man knelt down to comfort her, hoisting her up onto his shoulder and patting the back of her head.

There was nothing here, Felix reminded himself, forcing his hand back to his side. Just the folk of Fhirdiad, he told himself firmly. Not a threat.

When Felix arrived back at the palace, his fingers were still smarting as though the mask had burned through his gloves. There was a messenger waiting at the gates for him.

“Your Grace,” the messenger bowed quickly, “Sir Ubert has just returned. He requests your presence in the council room.”

Felix nodded, the news nearly driving all of his whirling, disoriented thoughts out of his head. Ashe was back then, from his mission with the archbishop. That could not bode well.

Outside of the council chambers, Felix saw Sylvain approaching from the other direction. He wore a thin linen shirt, a missed button exposing a few inches of his chest to the air, and there was a bloody split in his lip.

“Hey Felix,” Sylvain greeted him before Felix could reach the door and attempt to ignore him. “Perfect time for a meeting, right? I was just wrapping things up with Tatiana Gideon. She’s been hosting these music seminars, and it seems I have a certain embouchure…”

Felix’s eyes flicked down to the unbuttoned shirt and Sylvain’s tousled hair. He said noting, but gave Sylvian a poisonous look.

If Sylvain wanted to mess around and ignore any chance he had at being helpful, did he have to do it with the airheaded daughter of one of the notoriously difficult west Faerghan families? 

The door opened before Sylvian could say any more. Ashe beckoned them in quickly, his eyes darting about the hall to check if anyone else was there. He looked exhausted, mud splattered up his boots and his hair windswept from the ride in. There were uncharacteristic bags beneath his green eyes.

“Ashe!” Sylvain greeted him merrily.

“Sorry, no time for a proper greeting, come in,” Ashe said furtively. He snapped the door closed behind them as soon as Felix had cleared the threshold.

Inside, already seated at the table, was Dimitri. Felix suppressed a wave of anger that he was unattended, apparently wandering the halls alone again. But he looked better. No more of the haunted, empty staring from the morning’s exhumation. There was focus and stability in the set of his eye and the line of his mouth. Felix tried not to feel too relieved.

“What is this about?” Felix asked, standing beside his usual seat, but not yet sitting.

“Ashe, will three be sufficient?” Dimitri asked calmly. Ashe sighed heavily.

“I hope so,” he said. “Before I explain, I must ask, have each of you seemed like yourselves lately? Behaving as you usually would?”

Felix snorted. It was an absurd question. Sylvain had become nothing but a heightened parody of himself lately, while Dimitri was both more and less himself with each day.

“I believe so,” Dimitri said carefully, looking at Felix. “Although, there have been some… odd moments.”

“An odd moment?” Felix said flatly, glaring at Dimitri.

“A lapse in memory,” Dimitri replied, speaking to Ashe and ignoring Felix’s commentary. Ashe frowned and looked at Felix. He felt his stomach lurch.

“You’ve all known each other for years,” Ashe said grimly, “I need you to tell me a secret. Something the average person couldn’t find out about you.”

Felix’s hand clenched on the back of the chair. Why was today apparently the day for all of his former classmates to start prying into his private matters?

“Easy,” Sylvain said, “that summer when we were eleven? I told Felix the tale of the Wandering Beast while we were on a hunt and then every night after that, I heard him sneaking out of his tent to go sleep with Glenn.”

Felix’s jaw dropped in indignant horror.

“Correct?” Ashe asked him urgently.

“Yes,” Felix grunted under his breath.

“He’s telling the truth? You remember that?” Ashe added. His face was deadly serious. Felix relented.

“Yes,” he said louder, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Good,” Ashe nodded, “Dimitri?”

“Sylvain stole a decanter of sacred wine from the royal chapel and split the bottle with me on my fifteenth birthday,” Dimitri said quickly. “I couldn’t taste it, so I told him it reminded me of Noa berry tart.”

“True,” Sylvain nodded. “And deeply weird. It tasted like sour piss.”

“Felix?” Ashe asked in the silence that followed.

Felix looked blankly down at the table. There had to be some private story between him and Dimitri that was mundane, some small embarrassment or dull little joke. None of them were coming to mind.

Felix noticed Ashe’s hand was creeping behind his back. What in the burning flames was going on? 

“The Zoltan,” Felix said, “back at the academy—”

“Everyone knows about your fancy sword, Felix,” Sylvain said, rolling his eyes.

Felix exhaled hard through his nose. His entire childhood, he realized, was full of nothing but secrets. Was there ever any part of him and Dimitri that wasn’t still raw and too delicate to speak about?

“After Gronder,” Felix said carefully, “I… went to the cathedral. In the storm.”

He looked purposefully down at the table as he said it.

“Yes,” Dimitri murmured from beside him. “Yes, I remember.”

Ashe seemed to relax.

“Now what is this about?” Felix snarled, eager to move on from the suddenly solemn energy of the room.

“I don’t have much time to explain,” Ashe said, “Byleth has sent me to track something of great importance, but the implications of our latest discovery were too critical to ignore.”

“So what did you find?” Felix asked impatiently.

“We found Lord Arundel,” Ashe said.

It was such a… frankly bizarre thing to say, that even Felix fell abruptly silent.

Lord Arundel? The man they had killed at Derdriu? He had been a prominent Imperial general, but what did that have to do with the strange ruins in Hrym? And what was more, Felix was positive that they had burnt his body outside of the city with the rest of the dead.

“Lord Arundel,” Dimitri said slowly. “He was… my stepmother’s brother. After the Insurrection, he seemed to change. Stepmother always said he was pious, but his donations to the church suddenly stopped.”

Ashe paused.

“We found… fourteen Lord Arundel’s,” he said finally.

Silence. Felix shifted slightly and the sound of his boot against the stone was deafening.

“Oh,” Sylvain finally broke the silence. “Weird.”

“So what we fought in Derdriu was…” Dimitri finally whispered. “Not Lord Arundel, I presume.”

“We don’t understand anything yet,” Ashe replied. “But the threat of an enemy who can take on the appearance of another person so completely, not simply with an illusion, but to maintain that form for years and years… it is potentially catastrophic.”

Felix felt like his mind was running slowly, like a cart wheel spinning uselessly in churned mud. The implications were enormous in scope. Any member of the court, no matter how established, how long serving. Any member of the guard, of Dimitri’s attendants, of the servants or the cooks…

He was interrupted by the sound of laughter. Dimitri was laughing, weak and relieved, his head thrown back. Felix spun to look at him. His face was elated, as though Ashe’s words had lifted some unimaginable burden from him.

In the Holy Tomb, Felix had just stood there and let it happen.

This time, he grabbed Dimitri by the front of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. Dimitri’s chest heaved a few times, but the laughter slowly stopped. Felix felt his hands tremble slightly where they were clenched in the thin fabric of Dimitri’s shirt, as though shivers were running up his arms.

“You—” he began, mouth suddenly dry.

“I apologize,” Dimitri said at once, stepping back as Felix managed to extricate his hands from the shirt. This time he at least still had enough of his mind to look ashamed of his behavior. “That was in poor taste. I am simply relieved.”

“Relieved?” Ashe asked.

“This explains quite a lot,” Dimitri said with a smile, running his hand over his face to push back the strands of his hair that had come loose over his eye. “All of those strange stories… for months I have been plagued by reports of unrest and trouble caused by my own men. But what if they were _not_ my own men? What if, for years probably, officials have been operating under the royal colors, unquestioned, simply because they wore the face of another? All of those stewards and seneschals, even in Fraldarius, stealing land. It makes sense now."

“How extensive could this have become?” Felix asked at once.

If Dimitri was relieved, it was only because he was an idealistic fool. He cared nothing for his own life, now more in danger than ever, simply because it might exonerate an old guard captain or a tax collector.

Or more, Felix realized, looking at the blissful smile still tugging at Dimitri’s lips. If Arundel had been replaced as early as the Insurrection, this could exonerate the whole nation of Duscur.

“Given the abandoned state of the city beneath the earth, Byleth expressed hope that most of their power was eliminated during the war,” Ashe said. “But however many of these creatures remain, I shudder to think how much damage they might cause in the right position.” 

“We should begin with the guards,” Felix said immediately. “No one patrols alone. Switch up captains and posts. Then anyone with a seat on the Lords Assembly. Sylvain, your father.”

Sylvain had gone strangely quiet, Felix noticed. It would have been reasonable to expect shock or at least a joke from him about the situation. Instead, he was smiling slightly bitterly and tracing dirt from under his nails.

“Don’t worry about it,” he finally replied. “My father and I have plenty of secrets we can swap.”

“I can inform Ingrid,” Felix said, “she can check with her father and brothers—”

“No,” Sylvain said abruptly, shocking Felix into silence.

“No?” he finally asked in disbelief.

“Leave Ingrid out of it,” Sylvain said. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix saw that Dimitri was not moving to contradict him. Felix had no idea why.

“Why would we leave Ingrid out of this?” Felix finally asked, voice tightening. Sylvain replaced his smile, suddenly as easy and languid as if they _weren’t_ discussing leaving one of their most loyal and capable assets out of a fight.

“She is occupied with other matters,” Dimitri replied instead, “it is safer to keep this between us.”

“I must go,” Ashe said anxiously, “I’m on the trail of something more and I can’t afford to lose it."

“Thank you, Ashe,” Dimitri said, bowing is head. “I will give this matter my full attention; I swear.”

“I only wish there was more information I could bring you,” Ashe nodded. “Watch yourselves. The polls will be counting votes soon and we must assume that there may be some attempt to disrupt Fódlan’s stability before the Grand Assembly is sworn in.”

“You’re just leaving?” Felix asked. “Your king could be surrounded by imposters. Someone already tried to kill him!”

“The fact that no one has succeeded gives me hope,” Ashe said, already moving to the door. “If every servant in this palace had been replaced, I’m not sure any of us would be here to have this conversation.”

“He’s right, Fe,” Sylvain said mildly. “No reason to panic yet. Even without swapping faces, plenty of courts have spies in the staff quarters.”

“We keep this quiet for now,” Dimitri nodded. “Ascertaining if anyone has been replaced will be much easier if they do not realize that we are looking. Ashe, fly safe. I’ll see you to the stables.”

Ashe opened the door, checked the hallway and then began striding quickly towards the stables, Dimitri keeping pace with his long-legged steps. Felix cursed and dragged Sylvain out of his chair to follow them.

The courtyard outside suddenly seemed impossibly large and crowded to Felix. Eyes were on them perpetually; gardeners, messengers, knights, and diplomats. Any of them, Felix kept thinking, any of them could be here to kill the king.

The courtyard fountain burbled to itself as they passed. Felix’s eyes strayed down to the drain at the center. Below them too. Below the palace, below the entire city, was a network of tunnels designed by none other than Cornelia Arnim.

From every corner, he realized, there was danger here. For five years, Felix had lived in a den of snakes and was only now realizing why Dimitri kept getting bitten.

“Ashe?” a voice called out from across the courtyard.

Felix turned to see Ingrid, hiking up her gown to half-run towards them. She was holding a sealed envelope in her hand. Beside him, Felix felt Sylvian slump, as though he was trying to hide his great big lanky frame behind Felix’s more modest height.

“Ingrid,” Ashe smiled tightly and paused to bow, “I’m sorry, I’m just about to fly out.”

“You’ve only just arrived, though,” Ingrid said breathlessly, staring between the four of them with confusion.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Ashe said with a duck of his head, backing away towards the waiting stable.

Ingrid watched him leave, looking slightly lost, as though she’d forgotten where she was.

“Is all well, Ingrid?” Dimitri asked politely.

His face was so calm and neutral suddenly. Felix hated how easy it was for him not to show his feelings in every word and gesture. He also hated that false smile with the weight of every year after Duscur that he’d been forced to see it.

“I was just—” Ingrid’s eyes still followed Ashe’s retreating back. Then she cleared her throat and seemed to snap back to knightly attention. “My father sent me with a message. He is tired today and the heat affects his constitution poorly."

She handed over the envelope to Dimitri, who began to tuck it into his coat.

“It’s the restoration funds,” Ingrid said suddenly, as though she couldn’t help but speak. “A caravan crossing the bridge at Myrddin were attacked by a group of locals protesting the gold being sent to Adrestia.”

“What?” Felix asked sharply.

“It was only a small group, mostly local militia,” Ingrid said. “But… Count Gloucester’s men attacked them. He hung their bodies from the bridge, Dimitri. Half of the countryside will riot once the news spreads.”

Felix looked at Dimitri who glanced up at him and gave him a nearly imperceptible nod. Gloucester had always been borderline seditious in his rhetoric. Perhaps it was more intentional than it seemed. Perhaps there had never even _been_ a Count Gloucester.

“And I think that’s my cue,” Sylvain said abruptly, bowing and starting to swagger away. “Too much politics for me. If anyone needs anything jousted or something, you can find me tonight dining with the inimitable Lady Gideon.”

“Sylvain!” Ingrid called out, but if he heard her, he didn’t turn around. Her cheeks were getting very red in a way that Felix did not believe was simply the heat. “What is going _on_ with all of you?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Dimitri said gently. “Thank you for bringing me swift word, Ingrid. I will see that Gloucester is handled.”

“Handled?” Ingrid looked between him and Felix in disbelief for a moment. “What about forming a plan? What about a decisive rebuke? If I send a message, I can have a battalion of Galatean Pegasus cavalry ready in—"

“Do not concern yourself, Ingrid,” Dimitri said firmly. “You have enough to worry about between your father and the upcoming harvest.”

Ingrid’s eyes shone as she turned to look at Felix.

“You know I’m good for more than delivering letters and counting bushels of grain,” she said fiercely, although her eyes were wet with unshed tears. “You know.”

Felix opened his mouth. Ingrid’s breath caught. But they were surrounded by people. And Dimitri was right. Ingrid was running a struggling territory essentially by herself and her father was ailing and it was not the time to be bringing her in to more secret pacts when a trip to Gloucester territory right now might be the most dangerous place in Fódlan.

“I know,” Felix finally said, with as much force as he could manage, hoping that she could tell that he meant it. “But we need you here more. The king can rebuke Gloucester alone.”

Ingrid’s face went still. Then she shook her head a few times. Her arms wrapped around her chest as she lowered her head, defeated.

“Very well,” she said quietly. She bowed at the waist before she turned away. “Your Majesty, Your Grace.”

Felix stared up at the brutally blue sky, cloudless, remorseless, and wished that the moment would pass. Let the sun fall down from the sky and let the moment just melt away so that he could forget about it, like every other senseless, cruel thing he’d ever done.

That night, he did not prepare to sleep.

He sat up, scribbling frantically at his desk to his uncle back in Fraldarius. If nothing else, he could at least see to his own territory, and the problems that had apparently been festering there without his full attention. His uncle was supposed to inform him about titles and estates lapsing back into Fraldarius control. To have Fraldarius be the territory causing trouble was intolerable. He would fix it now, as he apparently should have fixed it years before.

Count Varley had already been dispatched to soothe Count Gloucester and attempt to undo some of the damage with the common folk. And if Count Gloucester was some sort of… what? Dark mage in another body? Well, better Count Varely than Dimitri.

Felix’s quill snapped against the parchment. He cursed, flung it across the room, and then pressed his palms hard into his forehead, trying to force himself to breath evenly.

There was a quiet tap on his window.

Felix stood up, drew the blade from his side, and reached back his other hand to fling a dagger at the glass.

A figure in all black, with a hood over his head, was crouched on the balcony. An enormous figure. Broad shouldered, narrow hipped, tall but for a slight penchant for hunching his back.

Felix sheathed his sword and ripped open the window.

“Dimitri,” he said with a growl. “I nearly impaled you.”

“I’m sneaking out of the palace,” Dimitri said nervously, pulling back the hood to reveal his face.

Felix saw only the outline of it in the dim light from the candle at his desk behind them. There was a slight shimmer on the gold of his hair. Felix tore his eyes away from it and attempted to stop being so pathetic.

“You’re telling _me_ ,” Felix said slowly, “that you’re sneaking out of the palace.”

“Yes,” Dimitri said helplessly. “I know you will say that I’m being foolish, but… given the circumstances, is it much more dangerous outside of these walls than in?”

Felix folded his arms and said nothing. He turned to look up at the moon overhead, nearly full. He sniffed and then huffed the breath out through his mouth.

“Why are you here, then?” Felix finally asked.

“Because I trust you,” Dimitri said quietly. “Because if you’re watching my back, I know that wherever I am is safe."

Felix struggled to keep his face still. He could feel his stubbornness crumbling. Damn it, what point was there really, in keeping Dimitri cooped up in his rooms?

He could feel it in himself too. He was tired of waiting behind walls and scribbling letters.

That masked figure, waving at him from across the courtyard, had issued a challenge. It had said in so many words, I can be anywhere and so long as I exist, nowhere will be a haven. It was about time for Felix to accept the invitation and fight back.

“Alright,” he relented, “where are we going, then?”

“You aren’t going to like this part,” Dimitri said with a grimace, “but before you react, think about this. We need an ally outside of this palace. We need someone with the trust of the people. If there is a traitor trying to sow discord in this kingdom, the best I can do is to try to make a preemptive peace.”

“Saints in the heavens,” Felix groaned, dragging his hand down his face.

“We need her, Felix,” Dimitri pleaded. “and she’s already in the city. Please, Felix, I have to talk to Dorothea Arnault.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time, the woman herself, at last...


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: poison, truth serum, suicide. This chapter features a flashback to a suicide attempt. If you need to skip, it begins around "The words wouldn’t stop" and ends by "Dimitri winced, braced for a blow."

_“Man is not ellis, platly forto thinke,_

_But as a winde wiche is transitorie,_

_Passinge ay forthe, whether he wake or winke,_

_Towarde this Daunce.”_

_–-John Lydgate_

It ought to be easier, Dimitri thought, to sneak out of a palace. After all, what reason was there to guard who was leaving? Nevertheless, after dark when the gates were closed, it was shockingly difficult to get out without attracting attention, particularly when one was dressed all in black and hooded like a burglar.

After managing to slip out of the high keep walls, they had reached the last barrier, a perimeter wall around the riding park on the northern side of the palace. Dimitri leapt up to grip the top of the low stone wall and pulled himself over.

From behind him, he heard a small, irritable sigh.

“Oh,” Dimitri said, hoisting his head back over the wall to look. “Felix. I could give you a hand—”

Felix grabbed the lowest branch of a nearby tree and swung himself to the top of the wall with barely a wobble as he landed perfectly on the narrow top.

“Not everyone needs to be a hundred feet tall,” Felix said, jumping down to the other side with his usual precise grace.

Dimitri smiled nervously, although it was so dark that he wasn’t sure why he bothered. He felt an odd hum of excitement that Felix had agreed to come with him, although he wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t been a terrible idea.

It was pragmatic, he assured himself, to have brought along someone to watch his back who he felt certain could not be the traitor in his court. And Felix seemed to have decided that they were on speaking terms again after the disastrous fight in his study.

More than that, Dimitri reminded himself uncomfortably. Felix had, in so many words, admitted to their unfortunate relapse after Gronder. That unspoken burden felt oddly easier to carry now. It had happened, they had acknowledged it, and now they could agree not to let it happen again.

 _‘You really are a fool.’_ Edelgard’s voice came from over his shoulder, as clearly as if the Hegemon herself was looming just behind him. _‘You truly believe that the past will stay buried in this state, when you can hear it digging itself up from beneath the ground?’_

Dimitri resisted the urge to glance behind him.

“So where are we even going?” Felix asked as they finally made it through the trees and into someone’s vegetable garden behind one of the large manors surrounding the palace. “I assume Dorothea didn’t send an invitation with an address?”

“I am a king, Felix,” Dimitri reminded him, “I have people who can find this sort of thing out.”

“People,” Felix said suspiciously and then fell silent.

Dimitri could understand why it bothered Felix so much, perhaps more than any of the rest of them. Certainly, he was concerned about the possibility of an imposter who had replaced at least one of his courtiers. It was a dangerous ability, despite the relief it brought him to know the source of the corruption.

But for Felix, he had quickly realized, the threat of an impostor must feel more personal. He’d always hated dissimulation. “Which is your true face?” Dimitri remembered him asking. Yet another thing, Dimitri thought with a flinch, yet another terrible scar he’d left on Felix.

“In any case,” Dimitri said, shaking off the momentary lapse into darkness, “my associate seemed to believe that Dorothea has likely been staying at the old Odeon theatre, or at least, a number of her informants have been suddenly frequenting the place.”

“I thought the theatres were all burned under the Dukedom,” Felix said with a hint of bitterness.

“I doubt the Odeon has hosted a performance since my father’s reign,” Dimitri agreed, “which makes it a likely, if not entirely comfortable, accommodation for rebels.”

“And you intend to just walk in and hope they do not hold you for ransom?” Felix asked skeptically. 

“I don’t believe Dorothea is so foolish as to try to hold me for ransom,” Dimitri said. “Particularly with you at my side. But in the event that our conversation becomes… heated, there is safe house nearby.”

“A safe house?” Felix asked, and as they passed below a lantern burning at the corner of a house, Dimitri saw his eyes narrowing. “You mean… you aren’t talking about breaking into an orphanage?”

“Mercedes will return any day now, and she would surely allow us sanctuary in the chapel,” Dimitri shrugged, “I would hardly call that breaking in.” 

“This is a terrible plan,” Felix sighed.

Dimitri paused, letting only the soft sounds of their footsteps on the cobbles below fill the air.

“But you are still here?” Dimitri finally forced the words from his mouth.

“Yes,” Felix said with resignation. “I want to… someone needs to do something about this. If there is a way to stop the bloodshed, that would be preferable.”

“Then we are in agreement,” Dimitri said. They walked on in silence.

By night, Fhirdiad was still a raucous town. If it lacked the elegance and grandeur of Enbarr or the busy pace of Derdriu, it made up for it in a taste for revels. There was something enchanting about it to Dimitri.

Walking through the streets and hearing the stomp of dancing feet, smelling the smoke of hearths still blazing, feeling eyes passing over him as though he were invisible, made him feel solid, tied down in his body, instead of floating in the jumble of his thoughts. During those years of exile, he’d learned to long for the comfort of anonymity.

It was also a good reminder. These were the people who had chosen him. He was not a king by merely his birthright, but by their assent. Even after he had abandoned them to the Dukedom, the people of Fhirdiad had granted him another chance. If ever Fhirdiad turned against him, then he would have truly failed in is duties.

The old theatre district stretched along the riverbank. Few of them remained after Cornelia had ordered them burnt, but the Odeon had been one of the grander buildings, made from stone instead of only wood and plaster.

“I suppose she has a reputation to maintain,” Felix muttered grimly as they crossed the bridge.

“You aren’t still upset about the White Heron Cup, are you?” Dimitri couldn’t help but tease. Old habits, he admonished himself once he’d said it. Better not to provoke Felix like that anymore. They were allies, not friends.

“I was never upset,” Felix snapped. “It was the professor’s mistake to choose someone like me for a useless pageant.”

“As long as it does not cause you to underestimate her,” Dimitri said, retreating back to business.

“Believe me,” Felix growled, “I have spent five years cleaning up the aftermath of your pardon for Dorothea Arnault. I am all too aware of her danger.”

At first glance, the building seemed abandoned, but as they drew closer, Dimitri spotted shifting shadows slipping back behind the rounded base of the stone foundation.

The arched entrance points were dark, but Dimitri spotted the slight glow of a pipe being lit in one of them. It looked for all the world like nothing but a few transients hanging about one of the many war ruins.

“How do we go in?” Felix asked quietly beside him, eyes scanning the roof of the circular arena theatre.

“This is a diplomatic overture,” Dimitri said firmly, “not a surprise attack.”

He stepped towards one of the entrances and his path was immediately blocked by a woman smoking a long, curved pipe.

“Theatre’s closed,” she said with a hard smile. “Not safe for visiting.”

Dimitri pulled his hood back and inclined his head slightly in a bow. He heard Felix groan behind him, where he had secreted himself in the shadows.

“I am in a bit of a hurry,” Dimitri said politely, “I believe my meeting with your mistress has been somewhat overdue.”

He did not often get much pleasure out of his title, but the expression on the woman’s hardened face when she realized that the King of Fódlan was standing in front of her was one that he would remember for some time.

She stepped back a few paces, eyes darting behind her.

“Giles,” she called out over her shoulder, “get someone for this!”

At once the shadows within the entrance the theatre began to move. Felix stepped reluctantly to Dimitri’s right side, hand on the hilt of his sword.

“If we die in there, I’ll kill you,” he muttered to Dimitri under his breath.

Dimitri squared his shoulders. He could appreciate the sentiment.

The interior of the theatre turned out to be more intact than expected. Scattered throughout the rows of stone benches were at least twenty odd fighters, some sitting and smoking or drinking together, while others appeared to have been resting, sprawled out on the old seats.

Dimitri took in the terrain. He and Felix might not be able to face so many at once, particularly if some of the shapes he spotted up in the box seats had bows, but if they could get to the entrance, the rebels would bottleneck too badly to give chase.

“Well, this is unexpected,” a familiar voice echoed from the stage itself, a wooden thrust with a ruined thatch roof once supported by a pair of scorched pillars. “So many fond school memories, and I haven’t had a single call from either of you since I came to town.”

“Consider your royal pardon the extent of our nostalgia,” Felix immediately shot back.

Dorothea Arnault stood on the stage. She wore a long dark red gown of the latest summer fashion, open at the back and low on her shoulders. Her dark hair cascaded over one side, making her look every bit the performer.

She was far more than that, Dimitri reminded himself. For five years, this woman had been sabotaging his nobles, staging riots against the church, and leading an aggressive propaganda campaign that called for the eradication of Crests.

There was, he realized, something of Edelgard in her. The same poise, as sharp and unbending as polished steal. Maybe it had not always been there in Dorothea, Dimitri wondered. Maybe she was also shouldering the burden of the dead.

“Felix,” Dorothea smiled, as though delighted, “I hadn’t expected to see you. All of the city concurs that you bullied your way into the Chancellorship despite still loathing the ‘boar king.’ Surely it can’t be _my_ presence that has tempted you out? I haven’t practiced my cotillion in years, I have nothing to teach you!”

“Dorothea,” Dimitri interrupt before Felix could retort with something furious. “I did not come here to dwell on the past. You and I are both aware of the problems plaguing Fódlan now. I ask for the opportunity to negotiate a solution with you.”

“Problems, Your Majesty?” Dorothea put a hand to her chest in a mocking parody of horror. “I see no problems. I am your humble subject. If Gloucester wishes to slaughter his civilians, I welcome it, no… I _pray_ for it!”

“Then we are not in agreement,” Dimitri continued, refusing to rise to her bait. “I consider it a very serious problem. Will you sit down with me and discuss the matter?”

Dorothea looked at him for a long moment.

“Imagine that. What an honor,” she finally announced and several of the men in the theatre gallery snickered in response. “Join me for tea, oh king, and I will endeavor to serve your will. I only ask that you call off your Duke. It makes me nervous to see a man holding a blade and trembling so.”

Dimitri turned sharply to Felix, who had yet again been lurking in his blind spot. Felix hissed slightly through his teeth as he released his grip on the sword at his belt. His hand was shaking, Dimitri realized, and badly.

“Are you--?” Dimitri tried to ask, but Felix cut him off.

“I’m fine,” he gritted out through his teeth.

“I’m afraid I have no palace, but if you will join me in the tiring house backstage, I believe that is the best I can offer,” Dorothea said very sweetly. She began to retreat to the back of the wooden thrust and Dimitri moved to follow, trying to keep Felix in his view as best as he could.

He wanted so badly to reach out and put a hand on Felix’s shoulder, help him to center and calm himself, but it would only make it worse to do that.

“It’s going to be alright,” Dimitri tried to whisper as they followed.

“I’m no coward,” Felix hissed back at him.

“I never said—” Dimitri tried to object.

“Just leave it alone,” Felix shot back under his breath. His hand had stopped quivering so badly and was instead a fist at his side.

The tiring house was lit by a few candles and was clearly where Dorothea had actually been staying. Flanked by a few of her followers, she led them back into one of the old changing rooms that was now occupied by a table and a couple of chairs. The walls were hung with fabric for decoration and the air was hot and still without the breeze.

There was something oddly intimate about it, Dimitri noted. Mismatched furniture. A few discarded mugs. She really had been living here, without much in the way of comfort.

Dorothea lit a small hearth with a flick of her finger, the casual use of magic for something so trivial clearly a calculated maneuver.

“Tea?” she asked politely. “I’m afraid I only have the sweet apple blend. My palette is less refined than a nobleman’s, I’m sure."

“I couldn’t taste it regardless,” Dimitri said.

“As if we’d drink anything you offered,” Felix said at the same time. He was still fuming.

Goddess above, Dimitri pleaded, would he ever stop being reminded of the damage done by the poisoning? If it could only have been Dedue to find him after, or Mercedes, who could have given him the antitoxin with quick efficiency and then sent him to rest. Anyone but Felix. And of course, it had been Felix.

He deserved to have had Felix find him like that. But Sothis have mercy, Felix had not. Felix had not deserved it. So why wasn’t he spared?

Despite their objections, Dorothea still hung the kettle over her hearth. The heat in the room began to rise and Dimitri felt sweat dampening his collar. She gestured to a pair of rickety wooden chairs and Dimitri sat carefully while Felix merely perched on the edge of his, eyes still darting around the corners.

“Someone is provoking trouble,” Dimitri began immediately, hoping that without her loyal audience, Dorothea might be more receptive to bluntly discussing the problem at hand. “I do not believe it is you.”

“Unusual assumption,” Dorothea said lightly, “it often is.”

“You wouldn’t sacrifice the lives of commoners to Gloucester’s bloodlust for the sake of your plan,” Dimitri insisted, “you wouldn’t send an assassin into my halls. You wouldn’t kill a guildsman running for the Grand Assembly just to stir up support.”

“You don’t know me at all, Your Majesty,” Dorothea said with a smile, “no offence. I am running for the Grand Assembly, after all. Perhaps I needed to take out a rival.”

“I don’t care what you would or wouldn’t do,” Felix said abruptly, “war changed all of us. We’re strangers. And given that we took everything from you, I don’t expect that you’re feeling merciful. All we have in common is a mutual problem.”

Dorothea’s smile fell away at that. Dimitri evaluated her for a moment. Oddly, Felix’s cynicism seemed to have touched a nerve, or at least gotten her interested.

“A mutual problem…” Dorothea repeated, nodding her head. “Interesting way to put it. My ‘problem’ is that you offer me the same despotic system as every monarch before you, although you have painted it as freedom of choice. Tell me, why should I pretend to love you and fawn over your gentleness? Because you will allow a few sycophantic commoners into your government? Particularly when your own men are quietly butchering those of us who refuse to be puppets…”

“You’re running for office,” Felix said shortly. “Are you a puppet?”

“If I win this election, it will be _despite_ your poll taxes and your press suppression and your campaign of intimidation,” Dorothea mused, “and if I come to the Grand Assembly unharmed at the end of it? Well, I’m fairly certain I’ll be taken away in irons before the first vote. Consider my participation an experiment to test how far your mercy will stretch.”

“Please,” Dimitri said, feeling something in his chest clench with every accusation, “this is not my intention. I assure you; the elections are every bit my genuine wish, and we would benefit by seeing them run smoothly and without more outside interference.” 

“Outside? I see,” Dorothea said with a slight twitch of her brow.

“If we are to negotiate successfully,” Dimitri began, feeling frustration creep into his voice, “then we must do so without assuming the other person’s intentions to be so disingenuous.”

“Except that we aren’t negotiating. I did not send an invitation. You showed up. Here. Where I live. To tell me that we must negotiate, as your kind always do,” Dorothea replied, her voice suddenly cold, without any pretense of friendliness. “As you did to Edelgard before you ran her through.”

Instinctively, Dimitri felt a twinge in his shoulder and his hand jerked up to the old scar.

“I wish her aim had been truer,” Dorothea whispered.

“Enough of this,” Felix broke the short silence. “Enough accusations. Dorothea, we have a traitor, probably on the Lords Assembly, who has been intentional trying to sabotage the election. Ashe has evidence of a sort of mage capable of taking on the appearance of another person completely, which would explain much of the trouble. You can believe him, or you can write him off as a collaborator and then our meeting is done.

Dorothea got up and poured the heated kettle into a pot. She set a tray down gently on the table and waited for the leaves to steep. The warm air filled with the sweet smell of apple.

“I have to admit, I’m surprised that this is your play,” Dorothea finally said once she was seated again. “Lookalikes is it? Imposters are to blame?”

“Dorothea, it sounds strange, but our intelligence could not come from a more reliable source,” Dimitri hastily filled in. “The archbishop has found evidence of this in Hrym. You remember back at the academy, the librarian Tomas, how he—”

“Yes, I remember,” Dorothea said bitterly. “You’re as mad as the rumors say if you think I would believe that all of these clear attempts to sabotage my movement are the work of some nefarious secret organization.”

“Why not?” Dimitri asked, trying to contain himself as he grew increasingly desperate. “Is it really so difficult to believe? You remember what happened with Monica. Why can’t you accept that it might be happening again?”

“Because,” Dorothea nearly shouted, her composure now entirely replaced by a cold burning expression, “everything that has been done in your name has been happening for _years_. Before the war, even. Everywhere in Fódlan, for as long as the books of our history have been written, this is the story. The people rise up in revolt and the nobility strike them back down, divide them, and that is how power is maintained. If you claim to be ignorant of that, then you are either a fool or you are one of them.”

Dimitri closed his eye and breathed carefully through his nose. He had been trained in diplomacy since the cradle. And yet suddenly it felt impossible for him to respond.

Because, the thought nagged at him again, maybe Edelgard had been right. Maybe the malignancy of the church and Crests had been too advanced and he ought to have joined her in burning it out. But he had not. He had killed her.

 _'Right when you’re at the edge,'_ Edelgard’s whispered voice came from everywhere around him, ' _you never have the courage to leap.'_

“And if you discount that the king is here, at great personal risk, and has sent no one to arrest you since you have been in the city,” Felix’s voice cut through the sinking sensation that threatened to overwhelm him, “then _you_ are either a fool or you are one of them.”

Dorothea paused at that. She poured a cup of tea from the pot and took a measured sip. Then she raised her cup to Felix.

“I’ll give you this, Fe,” she said, suddenly all charm and grace again, “you’re sharper than I gave you credit for.”

“No one calls me ‘Fe,’” Felix replied.

“I call you Fe,” Dorothea smirked. “Something to drink?”

She gestured to the empty cups.

“Don’t bother,” Felix huffed back. “Just get to the point.”

Dorothea turned to Dimitri and gave him a conspiratorial wink.

“Your Chancellor is an odd choice, but he is growing on me,” she laughed.

Dimitri felt oddly out of his depth. Nothing was going as planned. They veered wildly between outright threats and this bizarre pretend comradery. He was supposed to know what to do. He was _supposed_ to know what to do.

“What can I do to make you trust me?” Dimitri finally asked. His voice sounded weak in his ears. Pathetic. Not the tone of a king confidently negotiating, but of a broken man begging.

Dorothea looked at him for a long moment over her steaming cup. Her eyes were green, wide, and yet impenetrable. Felix was watching her like a cat poised to strike, totally still and coiled tightly in his chair.

“Read this letter,” Dorothea said surprisingly, “and tell me what you think.”

She reached behind her and took out a slightly battered sealed envelope from a pile. She handed it to him and he accepted it.

“Who is it from?” Dimitri asked.

“An old friend,” Dorothea answered with a coquettish smile.

Dimitri slit the envelope open and pulled put a sheet of folded paper. It emerged with a puff of dust.

The paper was old and clearly slightly worn from repeated folding and refolding. He squinted down at it and, with a jolt, recognized the thin, slanted hand.

It was a letter from Hubert von Vestra, former Minister of the Imperial Household. Deceased.

_‘If you are reading this letter, that means I have perished. As Her Majesty would never surrender to another, I can only assume she has fallen as well. It greatly pains me to think of this coming to pass. That said, as the survivors, I must ask you to settle certain affairs in our stead._

_You must destroy the threat that slithers in the dark.’_

Dimitri looked up sharply.

“Hubert was aware, then,” Dimitri said, “of all of it. He entrusted this to you?”

“He did,” Dorothea nodded. “What do you think of that?”

Dimitri took a deep breath. His head felt like it was swimming. He was dizzy, he realized.

“I—” he began. “I don’t know what to think. Edelgard worked with those who slither in the dark… she must have. She treated Lord Arundel as her uncle, despite the fact that he was certainly an imposter. If they were her allies, why are they not yours? If your cause is hers, then why would they be seeking to harm you?”

“Dimitri,” Felix said with slight alarm. “You cannot tell her—”

“I cannot accept that you would harm the innocent to drum up sympathy for your position,” Dimitri continued. He was babbling now. Words spilled from his lips without his meaning to say them. “I cannot accept it, Dorothea. But I did not order my men to do this, and so there is no other explanation. The only other option is that I… that I did. Because I do not know what is real anymore. Every day, it is harder and harder to tell. I see her everywhere, I see Glenn’s face in an angry mob, I see the dead watching me with their hateful eyes…”

“What did you do to him?” Felix got to his feet.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dorothea said evenly, still seated.

Felix seized the pot and smashed it onto the floor.

“No,” Dimitri gasped. He tried to rise, but his head was spinning.

“What did you _do_?” Felix demanded.

Dorothea’s eyes flicked down to the letter on the table. Dust shimmered on the paper in the candlelight. The dust, Dimitri suddenly realized, the powder.

“I only needed to hear the truth,” Dorothea smiled. “An assurance that I was still speaking to Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd and not something else wearing his face. I will see you at the ball soon enough, but if we don’t get another chance, I want to remind you of this: It is much easier to see what is real once you learn to let go of the things you think you need to believe in.”

As she spoke, she raised her hand. Dimitri saw a glyph flickering at her fingertips.

But before she could cast the spell, Felix threw the table over and then lightning exploded from his outstretched arm.

“Move,” he shouted, grabbing Dimitri and hauling him to his feet. Dimitri felt his stomach roll as he lurched upright. Everything seemed fuzzy and distant. His ears were ringing from the blast.

The wall, he realized as his eyes finally focused. Felix had just blown out the back wall with a bolt of lightning.

“Boar, on your feet!” Felix yelled as Dimitri sagged against him. “You’re too damned heavy, I can’t carry you!”

Dimitri concentrated all of his effort on following. He was dimly aware of noises behind them now. Something streaked over his head and clattered against the cobblestones.

“You have to run, you have to run,” Felix kept chanting, as he dragged Dimitri forward. “Move! Keep moving! Dimitri, you have to run, you have to, you have to. Goddess, what in the flames did she give you?” 

Dimitri did his best to obey. 

“It’s okay,” he managed to slur as Felix turned sharply into an alley and shoved him forward. “It’s okay, it’s not poison.”

“Then why are you…?” Felix trailed off.

“Cornelia gave this to me several times,” Dimitri continued. The words. They just toppled from his lips. He shouldn’t say these things, but he had to. He’d never told anyone these things before. “She interrogated me. I thought I wouldn’t break, but then she used this and I told her everything. Everything. All of the kingdom’s secrets. All of my secrets.”

“Dimitri,” Felix said in a tone of warning, careening into another street at random. There were still voices yelling behind them. Dimitri heard something explode and felt glass showering over their head.

“I told her about us,” Dimitri continued helplessly. “About how we used to be, how much I missed you, how much it hurt to be near you at Garreg Mach when you hated me. I told her about every dream, every fantasy, every idle thought that someday you might forgive me and learn to love me again. She laughed.”

“Be quiet,” Felix commanded him in a harsh whisper. “No more.”

Dimitri complied. He fell silent. The stones slipped beneath his feet. He looked up and saw stars spinning and wheeling overhead.

“Boar!” Felix’s voice barked again, bringing him back to himself. “It’s locked.”

Dimitri blinked. They were somehow in front of a door. The door of a church, he realized.

“Oh,” he said in response.

“Break it down!” Felix insisted.

“It’s a church,” Dimitri said in confusion.

“It’s the church you explicitly said we were allowed to break into,” Felix snarled, “break it down! Put that awful strength of yours to use and break the damn thing down!”

Dimitri slammed his shoulder into the wood and felt the hinges snap. The door collapsed in. Felix shoved him through the gap and then heaved the wooden frame back up and into place. They were somewhere cool and pitch black. Dimitri leaned against the wall.

Felix seized the back of his shirt and forced him forward until he stumbled into a larger room. Pale moonlight streamed through tall windows. The chapel. Felix pushed him up the steps to the altar, and then yanked him down behind it. For a moment, the only sound was Dimitri’s heavy breathing.

“Fuck,” Felix whispered after a second. “You’re still drugged.”

“It’s okay,” Dimitri repeated. “It won’t harm me. I’ll just be… very compliant with requests for a few hours.”

“I can’t be certain of that,” Felix said fiercely. He knelt across from Dimitri and Dimitri saw in the darkness that some of his hair had come loose and there was a burn on one of his shoulders.

“You’re hurt,” Dimitri said numbly, reaching out. Felix slapped his hand away and then leaned forward to examine the pupil of his eye.

“This can’t be happening,” Felix muttered under his breath, “not again, Dimitri, not again on my watch.”

“It isn’t,” Dimitri tried to reassure him.

“It is,” Felix hissed, “I need to get you to a healer. Drink this.”

Felix was pressing something into his hand. Dimitri smelled the faint herbal odor of an elixir.

“I don’t need it,” Dimitri whispered, pushing it away, “your arm—

“Drink it,” Felix said sharply.

Dimitri obeyed. He wanted to obey. He was so tired of making choices.

“What should I do now?” he asked, his thoughts still foggy.

“I need to go get help,” Felix commanded him, “stay here.”

“Help?” Dimitri asked, knitting his brows. It was too dark. He couldn’t read the expression of Felix’s face. His words were so hard, but it felt like he was trembling.

“You have been poisoned,” Felix said with acid in his tone. “Again. Why do you _keep_ getting poisoned?”

“I’m not,” Dimitri said at once. “This is a truth serum, used for interrogations.”

“Don’t answer rhetorical questions,” Felix shot back. “This is the second time I’ve let someone get to you.”

“No,” Dimitri insisted. “No, Felix. You haven’t.”

“If you’ve lost your memory, boar, let me remind you that one of your own people nearly assassinated you three years ago,” Felix growled.

“No,” Dimitri said. He felt sick.

The words wouldn’t stop. All those things that he had never meant to say. Things that he couldn’t say. All of them were spilling from his lips and he was helpless.

A part of him knew that he shouldn’t speak them like this, but Felix had asked. Felix needed to know.

“No one tried to assassinate me, Felix,” Dimitri said slowly, “I drank it myself.”

Felix stared at him and went totally still.

“You didn’t realize,” Felix finally said, although he sounded unsure, “you thought it was wine…”

“I poured it into my cup,” Dimitri told him. It felt like he was speaking very slowly. “The healers said it was supposed to help me sleep, but in higher doses, it could be fatal. I poured it into the cup because I was tired. I was tired, Felix. I didn’t want you to find me, please understand that. I wish that you hadn’t found me.”

“No,” Felix whispered, drawing back. “no, that isn’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri confessed, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t do it again. I know better, now, but then sometimes I don’t know myself. I can’t say, sometimes, what I will do. It was a moment of weakness. Just one. Just one moment.”

Felix did not reply to that. Dimitri pressed a hand to his mouth. He could feel his heart thudding in his ears. He’d said it. He’d actually said it. It felt like a dream.

That day three years ago, he had been happy. Someone else, he’d told himself, someone else would handle it all now. He would be free. No more days of uncertainty. No more failures. No more working into the early hours of the morning on problems that he could not fix until tears of frustration began to drip onto the pages in front of him. It could simply end.

He’d asked for wine. That had seemed appropriate. He’d never much cared for it. Then he’d tipped in the entire bottle of the sleeping draught, an essence of mandrake, and he’d swallowed it easily.

The healers had warned him of its bitterness, but he’d never tasted it anyways.

His knees had gone weak after a few minutes. He’d slumped to the floor, lain against the bed.

It was only then that he’d started to feel afraid. His stomach had hurt. He’d felt sick and shaky and bad. He didn’t want someone to see him with bile on his shirt.

Then the door had opened and he’d felt arms around him, shaking him. And although his eye kept sliding closed, he’d heard Felix’s voice repeating his name. Strong hands had closed around him. His head had tipped forward and he’d felt the soft fur of Felix’s cloak against his forehead.

And he’d been safe. He knew then that he had been saved from himself.

In the years since, Dimitri had never come that close again. The possibility sometimes yawned in front of him, like the great black pit of that empty tomb, but he had never been tempted.

Before, he’d told himself that death would be the coward’s way out. Gilbert had said that. Dimitri remembered the old man’s funeral, standing in the winter snow while Annette wept into Mercedes’ shoulder, and wondering if he’d gotten his wish in the end. If he’d gotten out.

But after Dimitri had tried it, dying no longer seemed like a way out at all. It was no escape, even for a coward. It was just deeper in.

After he’d seen the damage his one moment of weakness had wrought, he’d lost his taste for poison

“I wish I’d never done it,” Dimitri finally said. His words echoed in the dark chapel. “Felix, please believe me. I wish I’d never tried. I wish, at least, that it hadn’t been you who has had to bear the weight of it for so long.”

“You…” Felix finally spoke. His voice was raspy, so angry he could barely form words “You idiot. You idiot. How… how could you?”

Dimitri winced, braced for a blow.

It didn’t come.

Felix grabbed him, roughly, but grabbed him nevertheless. His hands formed fists in the back of Dimitri’s shirt, and Felix leaned against him. Holding him, Dimitri realized in shock. Felix was… holding him.

“Never again,” Felix said through gritted teeth, “never again, Dimitri, promise me. Promise it!” 

Hesitantly, Dimitri brought his hands up. He felt a shiver run through Felix as he gently held him back.

“I promise,” Dimitri said quietly.

Felix did not release him. He just clung to him, body shaking, gripping him so hard it almost hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said after a moment.

“Don’t be sorry,” Felix replied, his voice muffled by Dimitri’s shoulder. “Just be here.”

“I’m here,” Dimitri told him.

Moonlight glinted against the candles of the dark chapel. The sound of their breathing echoed against the vaulted ceiling. It reminded him of another night, another moment in a cathedral alone, when both of them had been pushed past the point of caring and…

Felix lifted his head. Dimitri felt the warmth of him through his gloves. One long strand of hair tickled against his neck.

Dimitri felt the hitch of Felix’s breath as a warm exhale against his jaw and…

“Alright, ghosts, fly away now! I’m here to banish you back to your graves!”

Dimitri leapt back and Felix scrambled away from him like he’d been electrified.

“Oh goodness, is someone actually here?” a high female voice called out at the sound. 

The faint light of a lantern shone across the stone floor. Dimitri fought to catch his breath.

“Mercedes,” Felix panted, slowly climbing to his feet. “You’re back early.”

Mercedes stood silhouetted in the door, a few of the orphans clinging to the sides of her skirts in terror as Felix’s shadow arose from behind the altar.

“I am,” Mercedes said warmly. “Felix, why are you hiding in my chapel?”

“It’s—” Felix sighed and then tugged Dimitri up beside him. “It’s hard to explain. But fortunate timing.”

Dimitri smiled weakly. He wasn’t certain about that.

Then again, he had no inkling right then of what sort of fortune might have befallen him if she’d entered a moment sooner or… a few terrifying moments later.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: poison, minor character death

_“Thus welth ebbeth and floweth as the flood:_

_Never welthy but som maner dystres,_

_Nevyr so mery but som hevynes._

_Oon thyng lakkyng aftyr thyne apetyte,_

_Nat all thynges beyng in plesaunt plite.”_

_\--George Ashby_

It was still the dead of night, but Mercedes put on a kettle regardless as she finished inspecting Dimitri. They were in the kitchen, the frightened orphans having been put back to bed. She had insisted on healing the burn on Felix’s shoulder first and she was now busy administering something that, in her words, would not “fix” Dimitri, but would speed along his recovery from the serum.

Felix sat at the long wooden table, leg jittering against the stone floor and fingers drumming against the wood. He was biting the inside of his cheek as hard as he dared to avoid making himself bleed.

Dimitri had blessedly fallen silent and Mercedes seemed to better understand that it would be improper to ask him any questions in his current state.

Felix stared at him, although it made his chest burn. But they were past the point, Felix decided, of pretending that Felix wasn’t looking.

His eyes traced Dimitri’s profile, prominent nose, high cheekbones, windswept strands of golden hair after their frantic run through the city streets. As he stared, he felt his fingers ache where they were tapping against the table

What had he almost just—? He’d almost—?

And Dimitri had, he had tried—?

Felix attempted to draw a breath and heard it shake in his throat.

“Felix?” Mercedes voice asked gently and he jumped, hands clenching on the table as if he was planning to flip it and run again. “Drink this for me, please.”

She was pressing a mug into his hands. He smelled something floral in the hot water. Felix shook his head.

“Not for me,” he managed to say without his teeth chattering. “I wasn’t affected by the powder.”

“Please just try it anyways,” Mercedes said with a very firm smile, “it won’t hurt to try it.”

Felix wordlessly pressed the mug to his lips and allowed the scalding liquid to run down his throat. It was a familiar taste. Chamomile. And something else.

“What is this?” he demanded sharply.

Mercedes blinked innocently at him, returning to examining Dimitri.

“There is no need for a fight,” she said quietly, looking pointedly up to where Felix remembered that the children were still sleeping. “It’s only to soothe your nerves and restore your strength after a battle.”

Felix frowned, staring down at the cup for a second. He didn’t like the sound of soothing his nerves. But at the moment, even he had to concede. His nerves were…

Dimitri in his arms behind the altar, head tipping forward, or Dimitri in his arms beside the bed, weak and unresponsive and oh Goddess please, _please_ —

Felix drank the rest of the cup.

As he was finishing it, he heard the sound of rapid footsteps in the hall and the door opened to reveal Dedue. He still wore his nightshirt tucked into a pair of trousers and the expression on his face was as close as Dedue could probably come to panic.

“What have you done?” he asked as soon as he laid eyes on Dimitri.

“Darling, all is well,” Mercedes immediately stood to reassure him, laying her hand on one of his enormously broad shoulders. “The king is sound and will be ready to return to his apartments in the palace by morning.”

Dimitri ducked his head and nodded very slightly in Dedue’s direction. Dedue immediately turned on Felix.

“There are men hunting you in the street,” he said, somehow conveying the weight of his anger without even raising his voice. “The city was already on the verge of uproar, filled with strangers summoned to the Unification Ball, and you allowed the king to leave the safety of the palace in order to…”

“I came to protect him,” Felix snapped back. “Goddess knows, I cannot stop him from doing as he will.”

“This was beyond reckless,” Dedue shook his head in disbelief.

“You don’t understand as much as you think you do,” Felix replied with as much venom as he could.

He knew that he probably ought to thoroughly test Mercedes and Dedue, try to make himself certain that they were not impostors, but he couldn’t face the prospect of another interrogation. Besides, his relationship with Dedue had always been strained at best. They had learned to tolerate one another, mainly by avoiding one another, but there had never been much friendship between them.

Felix hadn’t exactly put in much of an effort, but there was something about Dedue that bothered him. While he was clearly a capable fighter, a skilled diplomat, and a caring husband, Felix sometimes recognized in Dedue a certain ruthless streak. It was a blunt, pragmatic sort of ruthlessness that Felix had long tried to cultivate in himself, but had always failed to achieve. 

“I understand that you accompanied the king to meet with a woman who could have killed him,” Dedue finally said, stepping forward. “We rode all night back from the Duscur border, where the people are rioting in the villages and driving the king’s ambassadors from their lands, all because Gloucester has gone mad and decided to prove to them that the lords of Fódlan cannot resist a chance to massacre their own people. And I return to find that you have managed to allow Dorothea Arnault to drug the king.”

“I am—” Felix’s voice faltered as his face went hot with defensive anger and a hint of shame. “I did not ‘allow’ her to—”

“You are rash,” Dedue cut him off. “You encourage his worst tendencies. You convince His Majesty to behave with no regard for his own safety, for the sake of earning your respect, when you yourself have _plenty_ to atone for.”

Felix stood, knocking his chair to the floor with a clatter.

In the pause that followed, Felix heard the sound of stirring from upstairs

“Dedue,” Mercedes broke the awkward silence, “will you please go check on the children? I can manage down here.”

Dedue’s expression remained stormy. He cast another glance to the still silent Dimitri. Before he left, Felix watched as he stopped for a short bow. Dimitri raised his head finally and smiled encouragingly at Dedue.

“I’ll be fine by the morning,” he said quietly as Dedue took his leave.

Felix felt suddenly very stupid and righted his chair. Mercedes sighed.

“It was a difficult trip,” she finally said. “But dark matters are better discussed in the light of day. Come, finish that tea and I’ll find you a bed.”

Felix glanced down at his mostly empty mug. His stomach ached, but his leg was no longer tapping against the floor. He breathed through his nose as slowly as he could and stared at the back of Dimitri’s head.

The poison. The chapel. What was he doing? What was he supposed to be doing

Felix finished the mug and then set his elbows on the table and leaned his head down to rest against his palms. In two day’s time, he was supposed to be at a ball, charming nobles and reassuring ministers, but now everything was spinning so far out of his control.

He pressed his fingers into his temples, breathed, and across the room, heard the faint sounds of Dimitri doing the same.

By the morning, Dedue seemed to have recovered himself and was back in full force managing Dimitri’s schedule.

That was for the best, Felix thought as he watched the guarded carriages arriving at the orphanage gates. It had been easy enough to ascertain that Dedue was indeed himself, not that Felix had any doubts, and Dimitri was probably safer with him than with anyone else.

There was little work for him to do so close to the Unification Ball. Count Varley had written to say that he was close to sorting out the mess in Gloucester while Margrave Gautier was too occupied with preparations to discuss matters of trials and investigations.

Margrave Edmund had apparently been summoned briefly to the manor Dimitri had granted him in Itha to attend to is daughter, who was ill and unable to attend the ball. That left Felix with little to do, short of interrogating Count Galatea, and Felix was nearly positive that no mage would have replaced a man who needed his daughter to run most of his territory.

Right then, there were no charters to work on or petitions to review or disputes to settle. The palace was an uproar of stewards and servants preparing for the event.

And so Felix abandoned his clerks and instead went out to the pavilion to train until his arms ached and his legs shook with exhaustion. It made the time seem to slip away as the sun rose hot overhead and then began to climb back down.

As he practiced the forms again and again, Felix let is mind wander, chewing over the confusing mess of the past few weeks without really actively pursuing any particular solution.

There was the matter of the assassin. The man Felix had killed on the stairs was indisputably there to kill Dimitri, even if it was now revealed to be unconnected to the incident with the western lords three years ago.

If the assassin had not been posing as a servant, it stood to reason that he had not been one of these mages from Hrym. Perhaps he had been hired by one. Perhaps he had been hired by Dorothea Arnault.

But Dorothea had been aware of the impostors. For all that Felix hated her right then, she hadn’t actually attempted to kill the king, but rather to test him. If he took her at her word, then Dorothea’s goal was to test the entire system, even if it meant making herself a martyr in the process, to determine how far Dimitri’s offer of equality would go.

So either she was deliberately provoking the common folk, framing Dimitri’s lords and soldiers to appear corrupt or even murderous, or she was the person that the traitor lurking somewhere in the court most wanted to deceive.

It made no sense, Felix thought with frustration. There was no clear plan, even when he followed the threads.

If his enemy wanted the king dead, then why had there been no further attempts on his life? What was there to be gained in starting an uprising of commoners if you were already able to effectively replace a nobleman of the court? And if the impostor simply wished to crush the threat of a Crest Eradicationist revolution, then why attack the king?

None of it made any sense. If Felix were acting rationally, he would march into Dimitri’s chambers now and demand that he capitulate with the Privy Council’s recommendation to cancel the ball and postpone the election.

But currently, the thought of being anywhere near Dimitri was terrifying.

Felix felt sweat dripping into his eyes, making them sting. Goddess help him, he loved Dimitri so much it was destroying him. It was destroying the both of them when Felix acted this way, unable to keep his distance.

“Felix?” the familiar voice of Ingrid caught him off guard. He stopped and lowered his training blade, realizing that his muscles were trembling with exhaustion. Ingrid was watching him. She wore another long dress, clearly hot and uncomfortably heavy by the way she stood.

“You’ve been out here for hours,” Ingrid said after a second of Felix standing and catching his breath. “I passed you on my way to tea with Mercedes and you’re still training.”

“Spar with me,” Felix offered. Ingrid bit her lip and then looked down at her gown.

“I should return to my lodging,” Ingrid began to protest.

“Come on, I’m already tired,” Felix interrupted, “consider your ridiculous encumbrance only fair to even the odds.”

Ingrid smiled despite herself and then hesitantly stepped up to the pavilion.

“I suppose it’s practical to train in all of your clothes,” she said, running her hand up one of the wooden lances. “In case we start a brawl in the middle of the dance floor tomorrow.”

Felix snorted with laughter. Ingrid had no idea how likely that was.

That night, he dreamed of a battlefield with lords and ladies in bright colors, smiling and bowing before he cut them down.

On the evening of the Unification Ball, the city was full. Every inn was occupied and every nobleman had filled his manor with the distant relatives who could be squeezed in. Knights in Blaiddyd colors were on every corner, every wall, and a few patrolled the skies above.

Felix had heard rumors of trouble that morning from his uncle, who had arrived disgruntled that Felix owned no grand household for hosting him in the city, preferring to keep his closet in the palace.

But much of what his uncle reported was cause for concern. Apparently a barge carrying a few wealthy viscounts from the Rhodos Coast had been mobbed at the docks by a band of commoners wielding rotten fruit. One man had been seized by the guards for inciting the riot and apparently there was already a crowd forming around the prison where he was held.

Felix wore the colors of his house, a dark teal cape over one shoulder that his tailor had assured him would be light enough to endure the heat and a grey-blue tunic beneath. He pulled back his hair with more care than usual, ensuring that the tie would not slip.

Nobleman were granted the privileged to carry a ceremonial sword, while commoners were required to appear unarmed before the king. Felix chose the Zoltan despite its weight. He slipped an extra dagger into his boot regardless.

Before the gates were officially opened, Felix assembled alongside the other barons of the realm. He felt disconcertingly young once again.

Margrave Gautier was on his left, looking as always like he’d just come striding in from a hunt in a burgundy robe only a few shades off from his hair. Margrave Edmund had apparently made it back from his daughter’s bedside and wore blue and silver, his spindly wife on his arm in the same. Count Galatea was in green, although it was only serving to make the sallow undertone of his face all the more apparent. He had one of his sons supporting him instead of Ingrid.

And there, across the room, Felix spotted the Counts of Varley and Gloucester still in deep conversation. The fact that Gloucester had dared to even show his face at court after what he had done made Felix grind his teeth. The man was dressed in garish violet, a cut far too youthful to suit him. For one brief moment, Felix recalled the Count’s son, who had fallen at Myrddin. He resisted the urge to rest his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Abruptly, with a peal of bugles, the doors to the great hall swung open. The crowd rushed to present their invitations and Felix heard the steward begin to announce the names of the guests as they entered.

Dimitri was in black and silver. That wasn’t exactly surprising, but it still made Felix’s heart accelerate as he beheld him up on the royal dais.

Dedue was at his side in dark emerald green. That was good. Dedue would keep a close watch. The great hall of the Fhirdiad palace was no easy room to fill, but already the cavernous interior was growing close.

Felix abandoned his uncle in conversation with one of the minor Charon cousins and pressed his way through the crowd. He needed to keep Gloucester in sight, watch for any odd attendants or attempts to slip away.

“Your Grace!” a woman’s voice demanded from behind him. It was Tatiana Gideon, draped in a satin gown that had nearly hobbled her at the knees. “Your Grace, you haven’t seen the young Lord Gautier anywhere, have you?”

“No,” Felix growled back, ignoring her.

“He did promise me his first dance tonight,” Tatiana Gideon fretted from behind him, “and the music will start soon.”

Felix left her without another word, slipping past the noted Alliance commander Holst Goneril, surrounded by a fawning crowd of men and women alike, eager to hear of his latest exploits.

Across the room, he spotted Count Galatea taking a seat at the wall with Ingrid’s brothers carefully flanking him. She was still nowhere to be seen, which was odd.

“—cannot keep doing this, not while I am still Margrave,” a furious low voice muttered somewhere nearby.

Felix spun around to catch sight of Margrave Gautier dragging Sylvain to the side. Sylvain was staggering as he walked already.

“What would you have me do then, father?” Sylvain slurred, smiling defiantly at the Margrave. “Take Nell out in Fhirdiad?”

“I will not have my son out whoring on the streets of Fhirdiad and I will not have him bringing his concubines back to my estates,” Margrave Gautier snarled back, his hand still clutching Sylvain’s elbow. “The home of your ancestors is no place for your filthy habits.

“That leaves me very little space for my paramours,” Sylvain said with a wry smile. 

“Go and dance with the Gideon girl,” Margrave Gautier commanded him, releasing his elbow and shoving him forward on unsteady legs, “and if I catch you with a wench at any of my households again, I will reconsider your inheritance.”

Sylvain put a hand to his chest and gasped parodically. Still, he began to weave his way back in the direction of Tatiana Gideon before the music began to play.

Felix frowned, but he kept going. Count Gloucester was making directly for the royal dais where Dimitri sat and observed the crowd. Dedue was beside him, Felix reminded himself. But even Dedue could not catch and arrow or block a bolt of dark magic if it went off unexpectedly.

He shoved past one of the Dominic cousins, prompting the young man to yelp and hop back, but finally Felix had made it to the base of the dais. Count Gloucester gave him a sour look as he cut past him and up to stand at Dimitri’s side.

Dimitri did not look at him. The awkwardness between them might be unbearable, but right now Felix was more concerned with the possible traitor in the room than anything else.

“Your Majesty…” Count Gloucester began magnanimously.

However, before he had the chance to speak further, a startled gasp at the doorway brought the conversation to a sudden silence. Felix glanced up and then froze.

“Lady Ingrid Galatea,” the attendant nervously announced, and then cleared his throat, “and guest… Madame Dorothea Arnault.”

The crowd parted as Dimitri jumped to his feet.

Ingrid was standing there, wearing a lovely gown of pale green that fluttered lightly around her. Dorothea was in a complimentary shade of gold, although her gown looked more like armor than it did a party outfit. Her long brown hair was swept up but for a single curl spilling down the front.

“Ingrid…” Felix sighed through gritted teeth.

What had she done? What had she been thinking? Ingrid’s face was set and stoic.

She’d planned this, Felix realized with a sinking sensation. And somehow, he recalled, somehow Sylvain must have known that her sympathies lay with Dorothea’s cause enough to know that she couldn’t be brought in on Ashe’s intelligence.

“Get her out,” Margrave Gautier broke the silence. “She has no invitation.”

“Actually, I am doubly invited,” Dorothea replied loudly enough for the whole room to hear, “both as this fine lady’s guest and also as a member of the commons running for election to the Grand Assembly. I was told that all those on the ballot would be welcome?"

“Escort both of them out then,” Margrave Gautier continued.

Sylvain, Felix noticed, stepped forward at that, as though to say something, but he never spoke. Ingrid glared defiantly at them, her chin raised, as if daring him to say something.

“I was once known as a passable performer, Margrave,” Dorothea said sweetly, “won’t you at least let a poor girl dance one last time?”

Dimitri nodded to Dedue imperceptibly and then turned to look suddenly at Felix. As he did, Dedue stepped down from the platform and took Count Gloucester by the shoulder, seizing the opportunity to escort the man forcibly out of the room. The spindly Count barely had time for a squawk of protest before Dedue had bundled him down the stairs and out of the side door to where the marshal of the hall was doubtless waiting.

“This is bad,” Felix mumbled, “we need to resolve this before a fight breaks—”

Dimitri grabbed his arm and wordlessly looked into the crowd. Felix followed his gaze and spotted…

Something white. A white face. A white mask vanishing into the sea of faces.

He turned breathlessly back to Dimitri, who gave him a single silent nod. Felix stepped down from the dais, Dimitri at his side, making for the spot where the white mask had vanished and…

“The dancing shall begin, led by His Majesty, King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, first ruler of United Fódlan!” the steward announced, slightly doubtfully.

Damn it, Felix thought, as the attention of everyone in the room abruptly shifted from Dorothea to them.

Dimitri looked stunned as well, apparently having also forgotten that his descent from the dais traditionally opened the dancing to the rest of the hall.

“His Majesty is accompanied by…” the steward trailed off, squinting at Felix in apparent confusion.

Dimitri looked desperately at Felix. Felix felt like he’d gone briefly mute. Slowly, apologetically, Dimitri offered his hand.

“Accompanied by His Grace, Duke Felix Hugo Fraldarius,” the steward finished. Strings began to play as the band struck up the first waltz.

Felix stared at Dimitri in abject horror.

“Just…” Dimitri flushed, his hand still out, “we can’t let him escape.”

Slowly, Felix took his hand. This was every nightmare he’d ever had come to pass. This was every childish fantasy he’d ever longed for come to pass. Dimitri laid his other hand on Felix’s waist and began to move.

It was awkward, stumbling for a second as Felix was unused to following. Even through the layers of gloves and the linen of his tunic, Felix felt Dimitri’s hand against him like a heated brand. All around them, Felix heard whispers stirring in the crowd, sounds of interest, of coming rumor.

Felix tried desperately to look over Dimitri’s shoulder, to scan the faces watching them for a glimpse of white, but idiotically, he was too busy trying to keep his knees from weakening as he stared directly at Dimitri’s face. His blue eye was locked with Felix’s, his cheeks were flushed, and his mouth was slightly parted.

For a moment, Felix forgot everything else in the entire world. They were alone together, feet whispering across the tile, strings echoing from the high ceiling.

As they spun in time to the music, Felix saw other couples had finally come to join them, apparently deciding that the discomfort of Dorothea’s arrival combined with the king choosing his own chancellor for the first dance were two wrongs that made some sort of right.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Dimitri muttered in Felix’s ear, drawing him close as the steps of the dance commanded, and then stepping back to spin him around.

“It’s… ugh,” Felix said eloquently, “the man in the mask. We can’t lose him.”

“He was standing near the western wall,” Dimitri nodded, apparently more comfortable talking business as the song brought them close once more. “Can you see anything?”

Felix was about to protest, but Dimitri abruptly dipped him back and his mind lost the ability to think coherently for a second.

“Anything?” Dimitri asked anxiously.

“What?” Felix replied. His heartbeat was pounding in his cheeks now and he knew he must be beet red.

“Did you see anything?” Dimitri clarified.

“Oh,” Felix said. He hadn’t really been looking. “No.”

“Here,” Dimitri said firmly, “I’ll get us closer.”

And suddenly they were floating across the floor, spiraling dizzyingly across and past other couples to get closer to the west wall. 

“Dedue is holding Gloucester,” Dimitri whispered as they moved. “If we can catch the assassin before he strikes, then this might be resolved by sunrise.”

“What about Ingrid?” Felix muttered, “what was she thinking, getting Dorothea in?”

“She was thinking,” Dimitri sighed, “that she needed to do what she believed to be right. I can only hope that her trust was not misplaced, but it is pointless to dwell on it now.”

“I think that’s my line usually,” Felix said.

Dimitri turned them around once more, pulling Felix to his chest to getting a better look over his head.

“Well, if nothing else,” he said hesitantly, “you can consider this your second chance.”

“My what?” Felix said, a cold jolt seizing his chest. This talk of second chances, as they were dancing together, dancing in front of the entire court… 

“To beat Dorothea,” Dimitri said, just a hint of a smile visible at the corner of his mouth. Another peace offering. Felix thought he might pass out as the spike of adrenaline began to fade. “She is getting a front row seat to your dancing.”

Felix tightened his jaw and then let Dimitri dip him again, this time concentrating on actually scanning the crowd although he couldn’t help but flaunt the limber strength of his core. And he was rewarded with a glimpse.

“There,” Felix hissed into Dimitri’s ear as he shot back up. “Something white, slipping through the servant’s entrance.”

“The servant’s entrance?” Dimitri frowned, “Why? The ball has barely begun.”

“The kitchen,” Felix realized, “the wine, Dimitri. He’ll slip something into the wine and then be down the grate to the sewer before anyone can spot him.”

As Felix said it, the song ended. People began to clap. Dimitri stepped back and bowed to Felix, who awkwardly did the same, managing not to conk his head against Dimitri’s as they both rose.

“I’ll go,” Felix said quickly, “you stay with your guard.”

“I’m going,” Dimitri said, shaking his head. “You need backup.”

Felix had no time to protest as the crowd was already forming up for another dance.

Across the room, Felix caught a glimpse of Ingrid standing before her father, back rigid as he shouted into her face. Margrave Gautier appeared completely distracted by Dorothea, standing behind her as though he might at any moment decide to draw the short blade at his hip.

“Your Majesty,” someone called out, “for the next dance, might I request that my daughter—”

“We should hurry,” Dimitri said, slipping away off of the dance floor.

Felix crossed to the door, made cleverly unobtrusive by the paneling of the wall, and slipped through. Once they were in the corridor, he broke into a run, passing a man carrying a tray who stopped to try to bow to both him and Dimitri and nearly upset the glasses he was carrying in the process.

“The cellar,” Felix called over his shoulder. 

He reached the door across from the kitchen, hearing the sound of servants loudly chattering and making merry behind him, alongside the clatter of dishes from the scullery. The staircase to the cellar was dark, but the lanterns were clearly lit below.

Felix took the stairs as fast as he dared, hand going to his blade. For a moment, the wine cellar appeared empty. Massive casks framed his vision and he had to squint in the sudden dimness. Then, he heard the sound of metal shifting.

“Stop,” Felix commanded, drawing the Zoltan in a single motion and leveling it against the man in the white mask who was crouched on the floor, near the grate down into the tunnels that ran beneath the palace.

Slowly, the man raised his head, white mask leveling with Felix. it was eerie, expressionless and flat, but for the scorched flames burned into one side of it. On his left, Felix heard the soft ring of silver as Dimitri drew his own blade. 

“Stand down,” Dimitri said carefully. “Your life will be spared if you confess who you are working for.”

Beneath the mask, Felix heard a low, scornful laugh. The figure stood and produced a blade concealed on his back beneath his short black cloak. It was a narrow, deadly sharp weapon, probably already envenomed.

Felix glanced around. This was bad. Fighting in close quarters like this meant that a shallow cut was easily possible, even against two trained fighters.

Unsure, what else to do, Felix brought his boot down onto the barrel. His crest surged through him as he shattered the wood and let dark red wine begin pouring out onto the ground as he caught up the barrel lid by the spigot to use as a makeshift shield.

“Fine then,” Felix said evenly, “if you’d prefer to lose a fight first, so be it.”

“I’ve never lost a fight, kid,” the figure said, speaking for the first time.

Dimitri froze.

And Felix… he…

That voice was…

No. It was nothing. Felix shifted into his stance, feeling his shoulder protest slightly after the hard training the day before.

The man in the mask vaulted over the ruins of the barrel and lashed out with a series of fast, hard blows, putting Felix immediately on the defensive. He gave up a few precious steps in the tight cellar, but forced back the onslaught.

Dimitri swung for the masked man’s legs, but instead of leaping back, the man parried the thrust and sent Dimitri stumbling back into the wall with a single well-placed kick. Felix heard the sound of Dimitri’s sword clattering to the floor.

“Dimitri!” he yelled, tossing him the Zoltan before the man in the mask could slice him down the middle with another slash. Dimitri caught the handle in midair and steel clashed as the assassin’s blow slipped away harmlessly.

The man turned back to Felix, who was now unarmed.

Felix leveled the makeshift shield and used it to block another strike from the masked man’s slim blade. It sank slightly into the soft wood, giving him the opportunity to wrench the man’s sword arm back and swing for his ribs with his fist.

He heard a soft grunt from the masked killer and Felix used the momentum to force him back, wine splashing around their feet. Then the wooden barrel lid splintered as the man wrenched his sword free and Felix dodged back to avoid a disemboweling slash across his gut.

As he did, however, Dimitri was back on his feet and he swung a powerful blow with the Zoltan. The masked man barely blocked it in time and, as Felix was keenly aware, a strike from Dimitri was no simple thing to recover from. As the man staggered from the impact, Felix decided to leave Dimitri’s silver blade where it lay on the floor and instead threw himself into the man’s knees

The fell together. Felix heard the sound of the wickedly sharp sword clattering on the floor. He brought his arm up to press down onto the man’s throat, pinning him until Dimitri could finish the job. But there was something else. Something else had hit the ground when they had fallen.

The mask.

The mask had been knocked askew in the fight. Felix looked down to lock eyes with his opponent and—

Felix recoiled.

“Hey,” Glenn said with a familiar grin. “Not too bad this time, little brother.”

Felix scrambled back.

It was him. It was _him_. It could not be Glenn. Glenn was dead.

But it was Glenn, Glenn, lying on the floor, looking just the same, just the same. Their father’s dark wavy hair drawn back from his face, the shadow of a beard only just beginning on his chin, it was Glenn.

It was _Glenn_.

As soon as Felix let go, Glenn rolled back to his feet, and leveled the blade at Felix’s throat.

“Lay that mighty weapon down, Your Majesty,” Glenn said. It was _his_ voice. A little lower than Felix’s. More believable in its sarcasm. “Or would you like another Fraldarius for your ghosts?”

Felix heard the sound of Dimitri carefully laying the Zoltan onto the stone floor.

“Don’t you dare touch him,” Dimitri said, voice low and terrible. That anger Felix knew well. That was the boar.

Glenn looked down at him, a slight sneer on his lip. He’d gotten Rodrigue’s ice blue eyes. How many times had he left Felix in this same position? Kneeling defeated on the ground with Glenn’s blade teasing at his chin?

He’d never won. No one could beat Glenn. No one.

Felix stared up at him and numbly waited for it to end.

Instead, Glenn stepped back, wrenched aside an iron grate in the floor.

“Long live the empire,” he said, winked, and then dropped down into the darkness below.

Wine slid into the cracks and dripped down after him. Felix remained kneeling in it.

“Felix, get up,” Dimitri said, but his words sounded muffled. Felix stared down at the hole in the floor.

It had been Glenn. It had been him, but… unchanged. Just as he had been, so… so young.

Felix was older than him now. Felix had aged while Glenn remained young and confidant and glorious in his unharmed, unscarred splendor.

Felix wanted to scream.

“Felix, that wasn’t Glenn,” Dimitri said desperately, “you know that. You _know_. It’s horrible, but that thing was… was just a body made to resemble him.”

Slowly, Felix nodded. That was not Glenn. Glenn was dead.

Of course, Glenn was dead. It was just a fact, something he didn’t think about. Pointless. The dead did not return. The dead did not care if they were mourned or missed. Better to lock those thoughts away, as he always had, and move forward. Glenn was still dead.

But he had been right there too. He had been right _there_.

Felix slowly rose to his feet. Dimitri helped him up by one arm.

“Upstairs,” Felix said dully. “We have to get back. None of the barrels were open.”

“He’d already done what he came here to do,” Dimitri realized. He glanced around the room, recovering his own sword from the floor. “Felix, I don’t know what to say, I just, I’m so—”

“Enough,” Felix said. He felt distant from his body, as though he was being moved by strings just dragging him along.

Dimitri cursed under his breath and ran for the stairs. Felix slowly picked up the Zoltan from the floor. Not a scratch. Wine dripped from the tip, thinner than blood, but stickier. He felt it soaked into the knees of his trousers, splashed up the sides of his boots.

It felt like he was dreaming. Felix shuffled up the stairs, one shoulder accidentally hitting the wall as he made it back to the corridor. A servant noticed him, started to say something about getting his clothes cleaned. Felix brushed past her.

As he staggered back out into the ballroom, the sound washed over him. The crowd roared and music played and Felix stood on the outskirts and stared senselessly at it.

“All of you!” Dimitri was shouting in the middle of the dancefloor. Felix heard the strings die away, but it was as though he were deep underwater. “Set down your cups! Drink nothing! Summon healers at once to check every person in this room!”

Panicked whispers broke out all around him.

“Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?” Margrave Gautier demanded.

“An assassin,” Dimitri panted, “down in the winecellar.”

“You,” Margrave Gautier immediately turned to Dorothea. “Call the marshal. Have him take this woman into custody!”

Cheers erupted throughout the ballroom. Dorothea backed up, looking cautiously around herself.

“No, no!” Dimitri commanded desperately. He was blinking rapidly, Felix noticed, one hand already rubbing at his temple. One of those headaches, Felix thought dimly. “It wasn’t Dorothea, it was Glenn, I mean, I mean, it was an impostor, wearing his face, you see—”

“Your king is unfit to rule,” Dorothea declared, seizing an opportunity. “It is an open secret at this point. His mind is fracturing and yet you refuse to acknowledge what must be done.”

“What must be done, then, Madame Arnault?” Margrave Gautier demanded.

“Overthrow your king!” Dorothea declared.

“Listen to me!” Dimitri shouted in response. There was that tone again. That awful growl in the back of his throat. “These creatures, these monsters, they are the ones responsible for the Tragedy and so many other massacres. Any of you might be one, I just have to—”

At that, the guests began to back away from him.

Felix ought to have done something. He couldn’t. instead, he stood and stared at Dimitri from across the room. Glenn’s smirking face was burned into his vision, superimposed over everything else.

“This is outrageous,” Count Galatea arose and took a few steps forward. “Arrest Arnault now. If the commons supports her, then they are in revolt for a traitor and…”

He wheezed, struggling to draw a breath. Ingrid moved to steady him, but he slapped her furiously away.

The old man’s lungs let out a peculiar rattle. As Felix watched, his lips seemed to be darkening, turning a dark red. And then suddenly he pitched forward and onto the floor in a sprawl.

Screams broke out across the room. Guards began attempting to shove through the chaos. Felix heard a fizzle of warp magic and Margrave Gautier’s shout of fury as Dorothea vanished.

There seemed to be a sort of stampede towards the door, while Felix spotted Mercedes desperately trying to move through the crush to reach the fallen Count Galatea.

Felix just stood there. Let the crowd buffet him. Let the guards brush past him. Stood there watching.

Eventually the room emptied enough that Felix could see the center of the room again. Mercedes knelt over Count Galatea’s body, slowly shaking her head.

Ingrid had collapsed as well, a hand over her face as her shoulders shook with sobs. Hesitantly, a still wobbly Sylvain knelt down beside her and gently pressed her face into his shoulder. Dimitri was standing over them, head in his hands like he was trying to tear it open.

Felix took a few steps forward.

“What are you doing?” Dedue’s voice suddenly demanded from right beside him. He felt Dedue grab him by the arm, trying to pull him forward towards the others. “We need to—”

“Don’t touch me,” Felix hissed at him.

Dedue’s eyes narrowed and his jaw set.

“You cannot just stand here when His Majesty is in danger,” Dedue said, voice brittle. “You are the King’s Shield. We must address the situation, prevent the lords from enacting further violence. You must act!”

“I said don’t touch me,” Felix said, wrenching his arm from Dedue’s grip. He felt wild abruptly. No longer distant and dreamlike, instead Felix felt like he was drowning, gasping tiny mouthfuls of air before the next wave knocked him down. “Get your hands off of me, you dog!”

Dedue released him and Felix staggered back. Ingrid’s cries were growing louder. Felix couldn’t breathe. Dimitri raised his head to look directly at him, opened his mouth to speak.

Felix sprinted from the room.

He didn’t realize where he was going until he’d climbed onto the back of his horse. The streets of Fhirdiad were turbulent, but not with festivities. Felix heard shouting, the sound of glass shattering, smelled a thatched roof begin to burn.

He did not stop until he had made it to the cathedral. The monks parted before him as he shoved past them, apparently recognizing that it was Lord Chancellor, Felix Fraldarius.

The crypt below was abandoned luckily. Good. Felix hoped no one would stop him once he had started.

The stone slab was the hardest part.

After his nails had cracked trying to peel it off, Felix began to hammer at it instead. His Crest flared again and again. His fists began to bleed. He switched to the hilt of his sword and felt the steel chip and crack as he crushed his way through the heavy stone.

He smashed the hilt down again and again, hammering against the grave marker and watching the engraved words shatter into pieces. Sweat dripped from him nose and he felt tiny chips of rock stinging against his cheeks until finally he had made a decently sized hole.

Once that was done, Felix began to dig into the rocky soil beneath the Cathedral. He worked methodically, shoveling out the heavy wet clay with his bleeding hands. The earth was thick and scraped under his nails.

Then one of his fingers brushed something. He pulled it out.

A bone, short and covered in mud. Maybe a finger. Maybe a vertebrae. 

At that point, he stopped digging and curled up on the floor. He drew his shaking hands up, cradling the single bit of his brother he had left to his chest. Just a bone. A few little pieces. Nothing to bury but armor, scorched mail washed clean of melted flesh, the death of a _true knight_.

The ruined remains of the Zoltan lay beside him. Felix closed his eyes, unable to look at what he’d done to it. Distantly, he heard the sound of screaming beginning in the city above.

“Felix? Oh goodness!”

Felix didn’t move as he heard Mercedes’ feet crossing the stone tiles he hadn’t managed to shatter.

“Felix, your hands,” Mercedes said urgently, a glyph already glowing above him.

Slowly, Felix pushed himself back up, watching as his cracked and bleeding nails healed around where he still clutched the last remains of Glenn. He was filthy, covered in mud and wine and blood.

“Why aren’t you at the palace?” Felix muttered once Mercedes had finished. “With the Count?”

“Count Galatea is with the Goddess now,” Mercedes said, “my work is with those still in danger.”

“I’m not in danger,” Felix replied, unable to look up and face her.

“Was it… did you really see Glenn down there?” Mercedes asked softly.

Felix said nothing, then finally nodded.

“And you needed to be sure,” Mercedes continued, nodding to the mess of the grave open behind him.

Felix nodded again.

“Do you want to talk to me about anything?” Mercedes asked.

Felix shook his head. He didn’t want to talk at all.

“That’s okay,” Mercedes agreed warmly. “I think I can understand well enough. I think you need a little break, that’s all, from the war.”

“War’s over,” Felix managed to mumble.

“No, Felix,” Mercedes sighed. “You and… so many others who fought bravely. Some of you bring the war with you wherever you go. Lay it down for a night. You don’t need to keep fighting it.”

Felix struggled to take a few more shallow breaths.

“Come back to your room,” Mercedes said gently, “get cleaned up. Eat something. I’ll prepare more of that tea, and then you must allow yourself to rest.”

Felix hesitated. He couldn’t face the ruin he’d made of Glenn’s grave, the wreck of his best sword. He was still clutching a fingerbone. It was macabre. It was disturbing. What was he _doing_?

Slowly, he uncurled his hands and let the bone drop down into the mud. He got to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he finally managed to say. “You shouldn’t have had to chase after me.

“Well,” Mercedes shrugged, “I am the bishop of this city. Technically, you are in my church.”

“Oh,” Felix recalled, feeling even worse about the mess on the floor behind him.

“Floors can be mended,” she reassured him. “You have nothing to be sorry for. But Felix?”

“Mm,” he managed to respond.

“If you ever speak to my husband that way again, I will not be so forgiving.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D oh Felix :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mentions of political violence

_"Nomore of this matiere," cothe Mum thenne,_

_"For I mervaille of thy momeling more thenne thou wenys._

_Saides not thou thyself, and sothe as me thoughte,_

_That thees sothesiggers serven noon thankes?"_

_\--Mum and the Sothsegger_

What a mess, Dimitri thought, watching the smoldering remains of the last fires being put out by the knights down in the city below. The morning had dawned dark and cloudy. The air was humid, thick, and close enough that he felt like his head was being gripped in a vice.

He’d slept a few hours at Dedue’s insistence, but in all truth, he’d barely been able to rest without dreaming of Glenn’s face grinning at him from the shadows. It was a perversion, an insult beyond disgusting, a degradation of his memory so foul that Dimitri could feel a hot lump of rage pulsing in his chest whenever he thought of it.

He hadn’t felt this way in a long time. And it scared him. It wasn’t a good anger, a righteous anger, but rather the kind that beckoned him enticingly to lose himself.

That ought to have made it easier to resist, but when he remembered Felix’s face, that expression of fear and confusion and shocking, uncharacteristic hurt… well, Dimitri was a weak man. There were some feelings that he’d never had particularly well under control.

He looked down over Fhirdiad from the rampart for a moment longer. He’d stood there once before, five years ago, on the day when they had retaken the city. The plaza beyond had been full. Now it was empty and silent apart from a few battalions of the Blaiddyd Knights keeping watch should anyone attempt to storm the castle.

There were plans to be made. Most of the Kingdom courtiers had ridden back to their territories to marshal troops to contain what was now open rebellion against him. Dorothea had retreated from the city once the knights had regained some control, but the word was that she was moving south, and that the band of commoners who had left with her was growing with each village she passed through.

He was still holding Count Gloucester, but that seemed not to matter anymore. Even if he tried the man in court, it would do little to deescalate the situation. Dimitri thought back to Margrave Gautier’s face when he’d taken his leave to go rally his own cavalry. The man might be loyal to Faerghus, but he would never reconcile himself to Dorothea. There would be bloodshed. No matter what he did, there would be bloodshed.

He had to find the impostor. He was running out of time. It was the only way to reconcile the commons to the lords and he had nothing. No evidence. No proof. No word but his and Felix’s that Count Galatea had been poisoned by a creature wearing the face of Glenn Fraldarius.

And Fhirdiad was smoldering. The city he’d told himself he must never lose, the city that had put their faith in him; he could not disappoint them again. Not like this.

“Your Majesty, the others are awaiting you in the council chamber,” Dedue’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

Dimitri turned and managed a grimacing smile to Dedue.

“Thank you, Dedue,” he said, squaring his shoulders as best as he could. “Has Gloucester said anything yet?”

“He protests his imprisonment quite adamantly,” Dedue replied. “But he has given up no information of value.”

“And the mages have found nothing?” Dimitri asked, cursing his luck that there had been no response yet from Annette.

Dedue shook his head.

“He does not deny that he ordered his troops to hang the bodies from the bridge,” Dedue said, “but there is nothing to suggest that this was anything but common brutality.”

“There has to be something we’re missing,” Dimitri rubbed his temples as his head throbbed. “I can’t… I can’t delay any further. We must find the traitor. There is no other solution.”

“Dimitri,” Dedue said, his voice fast and sudden on the word. Even after all of these years, Dedue still spoke his name furtively, like he was afraid someone would overhear. “I—I will speak plainly, as you have often urged me to. There are several other options, even if Gloucester cannot testify to commanding this masked assassin to murder Count Galatea.”

“What, then?” Dimitri tipped his head back and stared up at the overcast sky, thick and featureless where it hung over the city. “Please, just tell me, what can I do?”

“You could command your soldiers to put down the rebellion. Or you could command your lords to stand down and… execute Count Gloucester.”

Dimitri looked sharply at Dedue. He said it flatly, but Dimitri had gotten substantial practice over the years at reading Dedue’s imperceptible cues.

Dedue held no love for Faerghan lords after the Tragedy, that was understandable, but to suggest that he execute Gloucester without proof…

“The Lords Assembly would fracture,” Dimitri managed to say after a few seconds. “I’d have a civil war on my hands. To a condemn a man without any proof of crime… they would deem me a tyrant.”

“Is there no proof that Gloucester has committed a crime?” Dedue asked.

Again, so slowly. Carefully. It was nearly impossible to detect the anger beneath his words. Dimitri felt a sudden twist of shame in his gut.

Because, of course. The massacre of civilians, no matter if they’d been attempting to steal a cart of gold, that was one of those ugly, legal blank spaces. It was, after all, within the purview of a lord to defend his property. 

“I… I cannot start another war,” Dimitri finally mumbled. He felt the weight of the past few weeks snapping at his heels, threatening to drag him down if he did not keep moving. Dorothea had called him mad, unfit to rule. She was close to being correct. He might have believed her if it weren’t for Felix, who had been there beside him to witness the revenant.

He felt Dedue’s hand on his shoulder and his knees nearly buckled.

“If you are unwell, I will go in your stead and present the council’s recommendation to you later, when you have had more time to rest,” Dedue informed him, gentler now. 

“Please, don’t do this,” Dimitri shook his head, closing his eye to avoid seeing the pity and tenderness etched into Dedue’s face. “Don’t worry yourself over my state when I am not the one in danger.”

“You do not deserve to suffer,” Dedue reminded him quietly. “This is not your failure.”

“But—” Dimitri began, but Dedue interrupted. Dedue never interrupted him.

“No,” Dedue said forcefully. “Dimitri, I will not stand by and watch you do this. The blame lies with those who have caused the harm, not with you.”

Dimitri lowered his head and sighed.

“I will go speak with my council,” he finally said, “I will still fulfill my oath to defend this nation.”

“Very well,” Dedue said, his voice contained again.

“Who is even left to meet with?” Dimitri asked, turning to follow Dedue down the stairs from the wall.

It felt symbolic somehow, finally turning his back on the city below.

“Mercedes has returned from seeing to the wounded. Sylvain has been left to represent Gautier’s interests in his father’s absence. Count Edmund and Count Varley are still present. And Ingrid is… Ingrid has demanded to speak with you,” Dedue recited grimly. “And, of course, your chancellor.”

“Felix,” Dimitri sighed. “He ought to be at home… he has seen enough horror from this mess.”

“Then send him away,” Dedue suggested. “Send him to Fraldarius to muster support. He is volatile. It would be a mercy in this situation.”

“I cannot,” Dimitri said weakly. “Dedue… it was his brother.”

Dedue remained silent and stiff as they walked.

“Speak frankly, please,” Dimitri finally said. Dedue’s jaw tightened. “I know the two of you have little love for each other, but I would hear you say it honestly.”

“Frankly,” Dedue said slowly, “I believe that I would prefer to hear what you are thinking in regards to Felix.”

Dimitri felt that terrible crumbling sensation inside of him again. It was too much right now. Felix was in pain. Felix was suffering because of him. Dimitri had told him, finally told him, about the poison.

And Felix had… held him. Danced with him. Fought beside him. Refused to leave his side. Leaned closer in the dark quiet of the church.

It made no sense.

“He—” Dimitri began with absolutely no plan for where he was going with the words.

He was so tired. It was always secrets on top of secrets, nothing but deception and deflection. Maybe he had always been the true imposter at the heart of Fhirdiad’s court.

“You know that when we were younger,” Dimitri continued, forcing the words out through trembling lips, “that we were…”

“Dimitri, I am well aware,” Dedue nodded quickly. He offered a cautious, tiny smile at the corner of his mouth. “You were subtle for a fifteen-year-old boy, but that does not mean much.”

“Then I suppose there is little more to say,” Dimitri said, although he was still shaking despite himself. “I am… I am apparently not a man who can leave his past behind.”

Dedue’s chest rose and fell in a long exhalation. They had nearly reached the council chamber and Dimitri thought that if he said anything more about this matter aloud, he ran the risk of actually being too exhausted for the meeting.

“Just be careful with yourself,” Dedue said, a final word of reassurance. “Please, Dimitri, for my sake, stay safe.”

Dedue pushed the doors open for him and Dimitri entered the long chamber. It seemed that he was not the only person who had failed to sleep much.

Felix sat at his usual place, back straight, expression hard, not a hair out of place. There was no sign of fragility in him, but for the faint bloodshot look of the whites of his eyes. He wore dark blue, near black, and he stared pointedly over Dimitri’s shoulder as he entered.

Mercedes was seated at the left side of the table, smiling, but with dark shadows under her eyes as well. Sylvain flinched at the noise in the manner of a man very badly hung over.

Count Varley appeared to be mostly himself, although he had that irritable harried look of his that let Dimitri know he was probably unhappy about the sudden royal intervention into Gloucester’s affairs when he, as Lord Solicitor, would have to find a way out of legal trouble for this in court.

Margrave Edmund showed no sign of fatigue, but the man had an iron constitution and a viciously honed taste for council debates that seemed to have been nurtured in the Leicester roundtable.

Pacing at the far end of the long gallery was Ingrid. She still wore her gown from the ball and her eyes were ringed with red. As soon as the door opened, she had dashed over to Dimitri and sank down onto her knees in front of him.

“Your Majesty—” she began.

“This girl is not a member of the council,” Count Varley snapped.

“Peace,” Dimitri said, holding up a hand. “Let her speak.”

“Your Majesty, I am here to apologize for my failure,” Ingrid said, her tone clear and resolute, despite the heaving breaths that she took where she knelt. “I brought danger into your court, unintentionally, but nevertheless, I must take responsibility for my actions. I believed that by inviting Dorothea, I would be correcting an injustice. I swear on the honor of Galatea that I only ever believed that she sought my help in running for elected office, not in assassinations and armed attacks. I was deceived, and as such… I… I must formally renounce my title as Lady Galatea.”

“Ingrid, no!” Sylvain immediately shoved his chair back and stood. He looked pale and sick, his red hair emphasizing the pallor of his face.

“You no longer wish to hold a claim to Galatea lands?” Dimitri asked gently. Ingrid shook her head, face invisible behind her hair as she bowed down to the floor. “You would prefer that the estate defaulted to your eldest brother instead?”

“Yes,” Ingrid said, although her voice broke as she said it. Dimitri heard Felix inhale sharply, as though someone had just thrust cold steel into his back. 

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Sylvain, but this is idiotic,” he snapped. “Ingrid, get up. Up!”

“I accept this,” Dimitri said and then nodded to Margrave Edmund. “Have the Chancery prepare the documents.”

Ingrid pressed a hand to her mouth and her shoulders heaved silently a few times. Felix cursed under his breath.

“I’m so sorry,” Ingrid managed to whisper.

Dimitri grabbed his side sword and drew it. He’d done very little right recently, but at least now, he had the chance to make some small change for the better.

“Dimitri!” he heard Felix say with alarm from behind him as Dimitri pointed the blade down towards Ingrid.

“You are no longer Lady Ingrid of House Galatea, then,” Dimitri said. He placed the flat of the blade onto Ingrid’s shoulder. “I dub you Dame Ingrid, Knight of House Blaiddyd, and accept you into my service.”

The room was silent. Ingrid looked up. Tears had streaked down her cheeks. For one moment, Dimitri worried that he had been mistaken, that this had only made matter worse. He nodded slightly to Ingrid, confirming to her that he meant it, with no ill will or trickery.

Her face slowly cracked into a smile. Another tear slipped down the side of her nose.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she croaked, “I hope that I will serve House Blaiddyd well.”

“Rise, then, Dame Ingrid, Knight of Faerghus,” Dimitri said, sheathing his sword.

Shaking, but unbreakable, Ingrid rose to her feet. Dimitri turned to see Sylvain staring at Ingrid like he’d just been blinded by a burst of light and Felix staring at him with… something. Something intense and frightening and big. Dimitri quickly lowered his eye. 

“Oh, well this is wonderful,” Mercedes said happily. “Now Ingrid, I hope you will take a seat. Count Varley seems very nervous about your pacing.”

Count Varley made an expression similar to a man being forced to swallow a peeled lemon, but appeared unwilling to contradict the bishop.

“Yes, please sit,” Dimitri offered. “I would value your input greatly today.”

Ingrid wiped her eyes and nodded, hurrying back to the end of the table where Sylvian was already pulling out a chair for her.

Dimitri stared down the long table as all of the eyes turned to face him. Dedue was already preparing his quill to jot down notes. Dimitri took a deep breath.

He was supposed to know what to do, but right now… well, he needed some advising.

“Chancellor Fraldarius,” Dimitri said, “if you could begin.”

“Our scouts report that Arnault is still moving through Blaiddyd lands, but that she has turned south to avoid crossing the plains,” Felix said, “she likely means to head for Galatea and the more sympathetic Leicester territories. There have been concurrent risings in Bergleiz territory, Gloucester territory, and Ordelia territory. There are also rumors that the Faerghan appointed governor of the Aegir lands has been deposed and taken into the custody of Adrestian loyalists.”

“What word from Byleth?” Dimitri asked.

“Our messengers rode all night to bring the archbishop word, but the Knights of Seiros cannot be deployed without the command of the majority of the church’s cardinals,” Mercedes said. “And honestly, I am not sure if it would do much good. Most of the Crest Eradicationists and Adrestian loyalists do not trust the church and it might only provoke them.”

“Your Majesty,” Count Varley addressed him, “as the only native Adrestian here, I am afraid that the riots in Bergliez and Aegir lands pose too great of a threat to ignore for the sake of peace. I would recommend decisive military action to put down this rabble and rescue your captured officials, with the church’s support to lend credence to the action, of course. These villagers are likely poorly armed, loosely commanded, and would back down quickly in the face of a real fight.”

Dimitri clenched his teeth but nodded as civilly as he could. Sylvain made a point of yawning very loudly and stretching. Ingrid managed to roll her eyes at him, despite the tear tracks still drying on her cheeks.

“What of the investigation into Count Galatea’s murder?” Dimitri asked instead.

He had to hope that a solution lay there somewhere, a solution that did not involve turning his soldier’s blades upon his own people. If he could simply find the truth, reveal it, show the folk of Fódlan their true enemy…

“It was poison,” Felix said stiffly, “we do not know how it was administered. Ingrid has sworn that her father drank nothing since he dined at home before the ball. And the palace guards have searched the sewer tunnels beneath the palace, but found no evidence of the assassin’s escape route.”

“This assassin,” Margrave Edmund asked carefully, “you accused, I believe, Glenn Fraldarius?”

Dimitri felt his face flush slightly, despite his intentions. It sounded mad. He had sounded mad, stammering and raving in front of the whole court.

“A person _disguised_ as Glenn Fraldarius,” Sylvain added before anyone else could speak. “Come on, Margrave, surely someone’s told you about the incident with the librarian back at Garreg Mach. Or what about von Ochs’ daughter, Monica? I’m pretty sure it’s this thing called magic…”

“Thank you, Gautier,” Margrave Edmund said dryly, “I am aware of _magic_.”

Dimitri shot Sylvain a quick thankful smile.

“But we still don’t know who sent the assassin,” Ingrid said slowly. “Clearly, my father would not have been the target if it were Dorothea.”

“The assassin is clearly affiliated with the Empire. You’ve already said, he wore a mask to appear like the Flame Emperor herself,” Count Varley objected. “And if this person appeared to be the elder Fraldarius boy, well, then I assume they work under the orders of someone cruel enough to make this personal. Let us not forget that we killed every one of Arnault’s companions during the war.”

“We?” Felix asked sharply. “Arnault’s companions? Surely you don’t mean your _own_ —”

“Felix!” Dimitri cut him off before he could finish the sentence. Felix and Varley were glaring at one another, each of them ready to explode.

“And what if we cannot determine under whose orders the assassin was working today?” Dedue finally broke the silence. “We must consider that such answers may be impossible.”

“Fhirdiad is dangerous and the palace here is compromised,” Felix said suddenly. “I recommend that we move the court to Garreg Mach and await the archbishop there.”

“We could send messengers to Dorothea,” Mercedes suggested. “It is unlikely, but if we could negotiate with her, it would spare many lives.”

“Most of the barons have already raised armies,” Ingrid pointed out, “we need to give them a clear and all-encompassing order not to attack civilians at any cost. Perhaps a few lords who we trust to remain cool-headed could be sent to keep the peace.”

Dimitri nodded to all of this, massaging his temples as he tried to think. His head was still throbbing with pain. It spiked occasionally behind his eyes.

_'Keeping the peace,'_ a familiar voice mused.

Dimitri looked up to see Edelgard sitting at the other end of the table. She wore her armor today, smeared with blood and soot.

_'I thought that when I returned that dagger, you would fulfill your oath. What was it again? To put an end to the cycle of the strong trampling the weak?'_

Dimitri did not respond. Too many eyes were on him.

_'You have nothing, then, Dimitri?'_ Edelgard asked coldly. ' _You see no path forward? It was a dagger, after all. I thought that the meaning was to imply that you had to make a few cuts in order to clear the way.'_

As she said it, Dimitri saw her throat abruptly begin to bleed. Her voice fell silent as her head tipped back and fell to the floor behind her with a wet thump. He winced despite himself.

Glenn stood behind her, cleaning a knife and whistling.

_'Sorry kid,'_ he whispered, ' _I’d heard enough.'_

“Your Majesty?”

Dimitri was torn away from the grisly sight by Dedue’s voice.

“Yes, I apologize, I was… lost in thought,” he said quickly, glancing around and seeing concerned faces.

“There is an urgent message, to be delivered directly to you from the Royal School of Sorcery,” Dedue repeated, gesturing to a servant who had apparently appeared at the door. “Shall we suspend the meeting or hear it now?”

“Annette,” Dimitri realized, a bit of hope beginning in his breast again. “Have her come in now.”

The servant showed her in without further fanfare. Annette looked harried, her clothes rumpled, her curls wild and slightly squished down on one side, like she’d just rolled out of bed.

In her arms, she was carrying an enormous stack of books that the servants seemed to keep wanting to help her with. Clearly, they had never witnessed Annette swinging a massive war hammer.

“Okay, okay,” Annette said frantically, dumping her massive pile of papers onto the table in between Dimitri and Felix. Felix gave her one of those withering, disgruntled looks and she absently patted him on the top of the head. “So, I was thinking, right?”

“Annette?” Ingrid asked, looking baffled.

“Go on Annie,” Mercedes urged her, “you were thinking?”

Annette began flipping through pages. She looked almost possessed. Dimitri feared to ask how long she had been working on whatever she’d apparently found.

“So, I was thinking about Pan,” Annette said, flipping through her paper.

“Your Majesty, perhaps we ought to conclude our business first and then hear—” Count Varley began, but every former Blue Lion immediately shushed him. When Annette was being brilliant, it required a certain delicacy to keep her from spooking.

“Yes, about Pan,” Dedue encouraged her.

“Well, no one really researches Pan,” Annette said, nodding around the table as though they had any idea of the answer. “He’s not exactly an easy subject. Mostly people just request the Agarthan Codex if they want to study dark magic, but never Pan. But I was in the library and I kept noticing that the books I was requesting, they were all, well, they had been used fairly recently. In the stacks, you know, you start to get a feel for when a book hasn’t been opened in twenty, fifty years even. But I had a suspicion and so I checked with the librarians and someone had requested almost all of the same tomes that I did.”

“Who?” Felix demanded impatiently.

“Cornelia Arnim,” Annette said with a disgusted grimace. “She was working on the same research that I am. So I asked the librarians if they remembered any other books that she requested often and…”

Annette finally produced the leatherbound folder she had been searching for in the pile.

“An Architectural Survey of Itha?” Mercedes squinted at the title. “Oh, how… nice?”

“Not nice!” Annette declared, her voice shrill and yet triumphant. “Nefarious! It was easy enough to check Cornelia’s former estates. She’d been granted some lands under King Lambert alongside her royal benefice. But under Rufus, she obtained the rank of Lady when he awarded her Carduel Castle in Itha!"

“Carduel?” Felix frowned. “That’s on the coast, right?”

“But why would Cornelia want Carduel, aside from title? There are finer manors, obviously,” Annette laughed delightedly to herself, “except that Carduel is built on the ruins of an old hermitage from the days of Loog! I checked for any local history. Nothing! I checked the romances of Pan. Nothing! I checked a folklorist survey.”

“And?” Dimitri asked.

“Apparently the region around Carduel has dozens of tales of a creature called an ‘upyr,’ a sort of witch who drinks human blood, and—” Annette began.

“It’s peasant superstition,” Margrave Edmund said, although he looked oddly… pale. For a man who usually showed no sign of his emotions, he seemed aggravated somehow. Anxious. Worried.

“Is something the matter, Margrave?” Dimitri asked.

“it’s simply… I am sorry, Your Majesty. Perhaps you have forgotten,” Margrave Edmund sighed. “You granted me Carduel when you appointed me Privy Seal, so that I could hold lands in Faerghus as well as old Leicester.”

“You own Carduel,” Dimitri blinked. The constantly shifting land grants had a tendency to slip his mind. People married in and out of them so quickly sometimes, he could barely keep track without the Chancery to record it.

“Yes,” Margrave Edmund confirmed, fidgeting with the button on his cuff. “And… my daughter. Marianne. I sent her there after some sad business with her horse…”

“She’s there alone?” Dimitri asked urgently.

“With my steward,” Margrave Edmund confirmed. “Your Majesty, I know I am needed by your side in this troubled time, but if I might beg your permission to take one day to ensure my daughter is arranged to return safely to Edmund territory…”

Dimitri thought suddenly of the tall, yet shrinking woman he’d met in the gardens, her eyes always lowered, her hands clasped, tears falling down her chin for an old horse. She’d taken the pain from his head. She’d taken his handkerchief as well, and he’d felt something with her that he hardly ever did. A sort of kinship of spirit, a mutual recognition of shared struggle and endless, difficult grief. The thought of anything happening to her was intolerable.

“I’ll accompany you,” Dimitri said.

The room erupted with protests again.

“I said we should move the court to Garreg Mach, not dash off into the thick of some other nightmare!” Felix was already shouting.

“Dimitri, you know what this means right?” Annette said doubtfully. “This folklore about blood drinking, it’s just like with Flayn…”

“I must register my discomfort as well,” Dedue added. “I believe travel at such a time poses an unnecessary risk!”

“I will go to Itha!” Dimitri commanded, frustration making his voice cut through all of the others. He hated the sound of himself like that. He was too loud, too angry, too frightening. But he needed them to listen.

“Please, let me explain,” he added more softly. “I do not plan to go unarmed and alone. Dedue, I will need my secretary to accompany me, as well as a battalion of Blaiddyd knights. If Dorothea is somewhere to the west or the south, then moving to the northeast is further from danger.”

“The monastery would be safer,” Felix retorted. “The church has knights enough to fend off an invasion and we know the defenses well—”

“This is not what you wish to hear,” Dimitri cut him off and then took a deep breath, “but there is nowhere that is certainly safe right now. At least if we go to Itha, we stand a chance at gaining an advantage, at learning our enemy’s plans before they strike instead of only responding. Margrave Edmund, I trust you keep a retinue of knights at Carduel?"

“I do,” he nodded. “They would, of course, be at your disposal.”

“Dimitri…” Felix warned, overly familiar in his bristling fury.

“If we ride today, there is a chance that no one will even know that I am not in Fhirdiad,” Dimitri continued, ignoring him as best as he could when Felix’s eyes seemed to be burning a hole through him. “This is my decision.”

Slowly, Dedue nodded.

“I shall accompany you,” he said.

“In my absence, I name Sylvain Gautier as my seneschal and task him to keep the city until my return,” Dimitri said. Sylvian snorted with surprised laughter, then glanced around nervously when he seemed to realize that Dimitri was not joking.

“Uh, me?” he asked. “Not Felix?”

Felix turned to Dimitri furiously.

“His Grace is needed…” Dimitri thought carefully. He could do as Dedue had suggested. Sending him to rally support in Fraldarius would keep him safe from further harm and away from a situation seemingly designed to torture him.

Felix stared at him, angry, defiant. Just a little bit scared. And with something else too. That thing that Dimitri was afraid to try to name.

“His Grace must remain with me,” Dimitri finished. “He is the Shield of Faerghus, after all.”

Felix nodded once, a quick jerk of his chin, but Dimitri could tell by the way that his hands loosened that he was relieved. Strange as it was, Dimitri had to conclude that Felix wanted to stay with him.

He knew, Dimitri thought with wonder, he knew about everything. He knew what Dimitri had done in the rebellion, in the war, even in his own chambers with a chalice filled with poison. And he wanted to stay. Not just wanted, but was seized with hatred and terror at the thought of being made to leave him.

Dimitri could not think about that right now.

“Mercedes, I task you to assist in keeping the peace and to send entreaties to Dorothea, requesting a parlay. Dame Galatea, if you will serve as captain of my guard?” he continued. 

Ingrid nodded with a faint flush of excitement in her cheeks.

“Oh, I don’t know about this,” Annette sighed. “Where do you want me, Your Majesty?”

“I need you here, interrogating Gloucester,” Dimitri sighed. “Count Varley, take a guard and ride for Garreg Mach. I will need someone with experience in the empire to be there should the violence spread north.”

He glanced around the long table. His shoulders felt tense, as though he was bracing for a painful blow. But none came.

Perhaps, he thought as he looked around at the faces of his advisors, he was capable of setting some things right. At the very least, there were still people willing to stand beside him through his failures and help with the task of helping back to his path.

It was easy to forget that any of them might be the one who had betrayed him. Who was still working against him. Who had been replaced.

Felix watched him, eyes hooded, mouth a thin, worried line. At the very least, he knew that this was truly Felix. Felix had always watched over him like that. It was easy to assume that it was due to suspicion or mistrust. It was easy even for Dimitri to assume that sometimes.

But he’d done that before, hadn’t he? Felix had always done that, watched him with that intense, studying look in his eyes, trying so hard to read him. And when Dimitri inevitably had to leave, that frown would wobble and there would be tears and Glenn would say “come on Felix, it’s okay, you won’t have to wait that long until you see him again.”

Dimitri sometimes wondered if Felix was still waiting, observing carefully until the real Dimitri finally came back again.

For now though, they would ride together and wait a while longer.

It was not a long ride to Itha, perhaps six or seven hours on horseback. Dimitri insisted on riding in the saddle and not in a carriage for shorter trips like this. After Duscur, he found the forced blindness of a carriage, however much safety if offered, unnerving.

But riding in the center of a thundering battalion of knights in the dark Blaiddyd blue and the lighter Edmund cerulean seemed as secure as could be expected. In the sky above, Ingrid flew with her calvary. Dedue rode in plate at his side, while Felix was with the advance guard. On Dimitri’s back Areadbhar was secured, still wrapped in thick fabric to hide the relic’s conspicuous bone-white tip.

They were moving at a hard pace, sweating in the stifling summer heat. The sky overhead was still dark grey, a flat cloud hanging low over the sky while the faint shadows of large thunderheads were visible out at sea. Every now and then, Dimitri was uncertain if he heard a wave breaking on the cliffs or the rumble of distant thunder.

Carduel castle appeared by evening on the horizon like a jagged tooth jutting up on the headland. It was a plain grey stone keep, surrounded by walls and steep muddy slopes for lands. Dimitri studied it carefully, although the whipping coastal winds made his eye sting. The walls looked older, weathered far more than the tall fortified keep.

The sight of it filled Dimitri with a grim sort of hope. They were so close to an answer.

As the convoy of soldiers slowed, the gates of Carduel castle were raised. Margrave Edmund was off of his horse at once. A thin, pale man with a patchy beard had come hurrying out to greet him.

“My lord, we did not expect you,” he said, bowing nervously. He did not appear to have noticed Dimitri yet. “If you had sent ahead a messenger, we could have warned you.”

“Warned me? Bernard, warned me of what?” Margrave Edmund demanded. “Is Marianne well?”

“Her ladyship is well,” the steward, Bernard, confirmed, “but there is trouble, my lord, out in the villages. There are whispers of violence. They say that… that the king is mad. That he is ordering his lords to slaughter any who oppose him before the vote can be counted. They have sent the reeve’s head this morning and promised to march on the castle.”

Margrave Edmund spared a glance over his shoulder to Dimitri.

“Which villages?” he asked, voice low.

Dimitri glanced at Dedue, whose brows were drawn.

“All of the villages,” the steward said apologetically. “But it is worst to the south. They have soldiers there, real troops, former Adrestians, they say. These lands grew lawless under the Dukedom. The bandits there are well armed.”

Dimitri felt his brief hope curdling to cold dread. Dedue cast him an anxious look. The troubles had found them, despite all efforts to the contrary.

“So much for the safety of Itha,” Felix grunted. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Dimitri shook his head. The steward finally seemed to recognize him and immediately dropped to his knee. “Ingrid, take the Blaiddyd knights south and put an end to this.”

“I can go,” Felix said indignantly. “I am more than capable—”

“We must remain here,” Dimitri reminded him. Felix’s cheeks were flushed with humiliated anger. Dimitri tried to speak more earnestly. “This is no insult to your quality in battle, I merely need someone by my side.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Dedue frowning, although it was hard to tell if this was a reaction to the situation or to Felix.

Ingrid had landed by that point, her Pegasus shivering with exhaustion after the long flight. She’d need a change of horse before riding south. It would slow the journey further. But Ingrid’s face was determined, her posture confidant now that she was wearing her armor once again.

“Wherever you need me,” she pledged, clasping a hand to her breast and bowing. “we can handle it.”

“In that, I have no doubt,” Dimitri nodded.

“Bernard, prepare our best room for the king,” Margrave Edmund ordered and then looked anxiously up to the keep. “Even in these conditions, we must treat the king to the best of our hospitality.”

Dinner was a gloomy affair, although luckily short. They ate cod in white sauce and spoke in grunts and monosyllables. Dimitri had no idea how the food was, but based on Dedue’s polite, tiny bites, he assumed that it was bad. Felix ate quickly and efficiently, without speaking a word.

The castle felt oddly empty for its size. There was a barebones staff of servants, all silent and unsociable. The Edmund knights were all stationed at the walls, watching for any sign of an approaching army, and so the benches of the hall were empty.

Marianne von Edmund apparently preferred to take her meal in her room, although the Margrave assured them that she was recovering and that her illness was merely brought about by the shock of losing a dear pet.

“It’s the weather up here in the north,” Margrave Edmund said grimly, spearing a forkful of fish and letting it fall back into the sauce. “The poor beast wasn’t used to it. And Dory was an old creature anyways. She’s taken it hard.”

“Dorte,” Dimitri added after a short pause. “I believe the horse was called Dorte.”

Conversation lapsed after that.

By nightfall, the wind was howling around the castle. It screamed against the windows and made the wooden beams groan in the hall.

A servant escorted Dimitri to a bedchamber. Dimitri had no complaints about where he slept, no matter how much people insisted on giving him the best. He’d slept in the cold woods for years. But even he had to admit that this room was unpleasant.

It was hot, lightless, windowless. Stifling and still despite the wind outside.

He lay atop the covers for a while in nothing but his shirt. Sleep evaded him. His head ached and, in his haste, he had forgotten to pack a vial of his sleeping draught. Dedue would have remembered. He knew Dedue was only down the hall, but Dimitri did not want to wake him.

So he lay there for an hour, sweat sticking his hair to his face as the pain in his skull throbbed and grew and grew. He felt nearly blind with it, lying half-suffocated in the oppressive darkness.

It was utterly silent apart from the wind and the creaking of the boards. That was strange. Often, Dimitri knew that his ghosts preferred to visit at night. He’d spent years at the Officers Academy lying in the dark awake, listening to the pained groaning of his suffering father in his head. But tonight, when he might have welcomed even the voice of his own madness, they were silent.

Finally, Dimitri could take no more. He rose from the bed. The stone against his bare feet was damp with the humidity where the rug did not cover it. He needed to wake Dedue this time. He lacked the strength to endure the pain any longer; he needed something to just knock him out.

After tugging on a robe, he opened the door silently, hoping not to wake any of Margrave Edmund’s strange, unspeaking servants. As he pushed the door open, however, he was met with sudden resistance.

“Ah,” a soft voice said in the dark. Someone was leaning on the wall behind the door.

“Felix?” Dimitri whispered breathlessly, recognizing the irritable grunt.

“What?” Felix hissed back defensively.

“What are you doing?” Dimitri asked.

“What are you doing?” Felix shot back accusatorily. “It’s the middle of the night!”

“Exactly my point,” Dimitri said, as incredulously as he could be at a whisper. “Why are you standing outside of my door?”

“I’m…” Felix sighed. “Watching. The door.”

Dimitri rubbed his eye. His head was hammering with pain and he couldn’t think clearly. Felix was guarding his door. Why was Felix guarding his door?

“You need to rest,” Dimitri said forcefully. “Felix, you must rest. I command you to rest.”

“No,” Felix said, infuriatingly casual about denying a royal order. “Now go back to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Dimitri said through gritted teeth. “I need to go down the hall and ask Dedue for something to put me out.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Felix demanded. In the dark, it was impossible to see his face, but his hand shot out and seemed to impulsively grasp around Dimitri’s forearm. “Dimitri, what are you taking about, what does that mean?”

Dimitri rubbed his temple harder. It hurt so much; it was hard to keep his eyes open. He wasn’t saying things right. He was provoking Felix again, reminding him, threatening him. They both were just stuck, reliving the same horrible events over and over again and they couldn’t seem to stop.

“My head hurts,” he said, and to his horror, he heard he voice come out desperate and shaking. “Felix, I just need something to sleep tonight, that’s all, I swear, but it _hurts_.”

“Dimitri—” Felix began, his voice thick with feeling.

Then he fell silent. Dimitri could barely tell why at first with the drumming in his skull. Then he heard it. Footsteps. Quiet footsteps were making their way down the stairs at the end of the hall.

Felix held his breath for a moment. As someone past the landing, a small circle of candlelight spilled into the hall. Felix stepped forward, pressing Dimitri back and against the wall. His hand was warm against Dimitri’s arm, so warm in the already sweltering heat.

The footsteps passed. Heading down to the hall again. Against his chest, Dimitri felt Felix begin to breathe again.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered.

“A servant perhaps,” Dimitri offered, but even he had doubts.

They both went silent for a moment. The headache seemed to recede slightly. The pain dulled and waned as he began to focus. This was important. He had to fight through it, ignore the ache for now.

“You’re going to check it out, aren’t you?” Dimitri finally asked.

“You’re going to follow me,” Felix sighed. “Because you’re an idiot.”

“Let me get—” Dimitri began, but Felix was already pressing a blade into his hand.

“Don’t bring the lance,” he hissed, “the damn thing is… conspicuous."

Dimitri had to concede that he was right.

“But Felix,” Dimitri whispered. He paused. For some reason, his mood had suddenly swung in the other direction, making him oddly giddy where he had just been miserable. “I’m not wearing any shoes.”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but Dimitri was pretty certain that he saw Felix grin despite himself as Dimitri ducked back into his room to pull on a pair of boots.

Felix slipped towards the stairs as soon as he emerged. He kept his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder, ensuring that they did not lose each other in the dark. Dimitri felt mildly disgusted with himself as he instinctively leaned into it.

As they reached the spiral staircase, the glow of the candle was barely visible on some of the stone walls, but it made an easy target to follow. They descended down, past the landing for the hall, and lower. The stone grew rougher, damper.

Dimitri felt his heart quicken as he felt the stairs beneath his feet growing shallow, old and worn with long age. His headache was clearing, reduced back into a low simmering pain that he could easily ignore.

This was it. They had stumbled upon their culprit. Somehow, they were about to find the answer, unravel the tangled thread that he had been following for so long now, ever since the Tragedy.

Felix was at his side, alert and ready. Dimitri felt oddly fearless, even as they went lower, towards where he knew his enemy probably lay. There was something intoxicating about the thought of a fight.

He would finally know. He would know who had been responsible for Duscur and who knew how many other deaths, troubles, conflicts stirred up by senseless violence.

_'Avenge us.'_ There was a familiar voice. Lambert’s voice. It floated out of the dark below and Dimitri welcomed it like an old friend. Perhaps this time, he finally would.

The candlelight stopped. Dimitri heard the soft squeal of a door hinge, and saw a glimmer of torchlight, heard the murmur of a few voices. Then the door swung shut again.

“We should get the guard,” Felix breathed from beside him. “At least Dedue.”

He was right. Dimitri did not care.

He would not lose his chance this time, even for a bit of wise caution. He shoved past Felix and wrenched open the door.

The room beyond was low-ceilinged, seemingly carved from the bare rock, and lit by a few sputtering torches. It was cooler than the castle above, almost chill with the damp.

And sitting around a table, the room was full of people. Dimitri froze in the doorway as they fell silent, turned to look at him.

It was Margrave Edmund holding the candle, about to sit in one of the chairs. His stony hard face showed no sign of surprise. In fact, a slightly satisfied glint was visible in his iron grey eyes.

Beside him was Count Varley, looking as sweet and pious as any saint. He actually beamed as Dimitri’s gaze met his.

And there were more. He recognized Lord Gideon, Count Rowe, even Baroness Albrecht from the east. He spotted a woman that he knew only vaguely as the Countess of House Bartels, and an ancient man who could only be the Viscount Essar. And there was a familiar face, the lurking figure Marguerite Kleiman, the deposed heiress who he had banished with the rest of her family five years prior.

All of them. All of them. It made no sense. All of them were there, even…

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” said Margrave Gautier, standing to greet him. “Ah, and you’ve brought His Grace. How convenient.”

Dimitri just stared at them. He couldn’t…

He must be confused. He couldn’t understand.

“Dimitri,” Felix voice came from behind him, very urgently. “Dimitri, step back, we need to run."

“That won’t be necessary,” Margrave Gautier said calmly.

“I don’t understand,” Dimitri finally managed to say, lips numb. “All of you. They replaced all of you?”

“Replaced?” Count Varley sounded vaguely offended.

“The king is mistaken,” Margrave Gautier nodded patiently. “He is referring to the Agarthans. A rather pathetic people, I have to admit. I harbor no sympathy for a race that spent thousands of years planning their revenge and choked when they had their chance.”

“What do you mean?” Dimitri said. His breathing was getting faster and he felt wild, unhinged almost. “What does that _mean_?”

“I’m afraid, Dimitri, that while we have found their tools very useful,” Margrave Gautier said, “the Agarthans who once slithered beneath are little more than another powerful relic now, fit only to be wielded by their betters.”

“No,” Dimitri shook his head, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

Felix seized him around the chest, tried to drag him back. Dimitri remained rooted to the spot.

“I will regret this, you know,” Margrave Edmund offered, finally sitting with the others. “I have grown a bit fond of you, for my daughter’s sake, if nothing else. If you had been brought up properly, there is a chance that you would have made a fine king.”

“You… you… at the Privy Seal,” Dimitri realized, his words coming slowly through his heaving breaths. “You signed away all that land in Fraldarius and Gautier and everywhere else that resisted the Dukedom.”

Margrave Edmund smiled very slightly.

“It took substantial coordination,” Baroness Albrecht said, as though she was almost offended not to be accused. “Across many borders.”

“And a good deal of personal risk from poor Gloucester,” Count Varley added. “Not to mention the sacrifice of old Galatea. Never could resist the offer of a fine brandy, that one, even before dinner…”

“Enough,” Margrave Gautier silenced them. “To gloat over a victory is uncouth.”

“Dimitri!” Felix shouted again, hand on his shoulder, fingers digging into his flesh. “Come with me, now!”

“Why?” Dimitri asked, staring at the margrave, who did look almost somber. “ _Why_?”

“Because, as I told you before, I am loyal to Faerghus,” Margrave Gautier said very earnestly. “I will not stand by and allow a single choice to destroy it. It is a difficult truth, it is a harsh truth, but the Goddess granted Crests to the select few for good reason. To defend this country, to keep our borders from falling to invasion, we cannot allow the commons to pollute our bloodlines. I will not let them seize control away from the families who have bled and sacrificed and died for Faerghus for generations.”

As he spoke, the compassion drained from his words until by the end, he spoke in a growl.

“All of this…” Dimitri said in disbelief. “You did _all_ of this just to stop an election.”

“To stop a precedent so dangerous that our houses would never recover,” Margrave Gautier contradicted him.

“To stop a weak monarch,” Marguerite Kleiman suddenly added. “To stop a mad tyrant whose instability would only grow if left unchecked. It would not be the first time that the great families of this land united to unseat a dangerous ruler before he could do more damage.” 

“Not the first time?” Dimitri felt a breathless laugh starting in his chest. House Kleiman had been stripped of land and title for its role in the Tragedy of Duscur. How many more houses had signed their consent? How many of the people in this room had agreed to allow his father to die, Glenn to burn, his stepmother to…?

“I am sorry, Dimitri,” Margrave Gautier said, shaking his head. “I will not do you the dishonor of trying to convert you to my way of seeing things. If it were possible, I would have made every effort, you have my word. As things stand, however, I am afraid that our paths diverge here.”

Dimitri said nothing. He stared at Margrave Gautier’s sickening, sympathetic smile. He stared at Margrave Edmund, still poised, barely letting his triumph show. And Varley, preening, and Kleiman, nearly salivating with savage hatred for him, and Gideon, faintly bored with the whole display, even old Essar, nodding and nodding with everything that was said.

There had never been any impostor in the court. Or perhaps there had been dozens. It had never mattered. The only people who had been working against him this whole time had been _his own people_. They had needed no disguise. The power was already in their hands.

He should have listened. Listened to Dorothea. Listened to Edelgard. There was no saboteur within the system. It _was_ the system. The dark ugly truth was that it had always been about the Crests, the strong tramping the weak, a sickeningly obvious answer.

And he had sat there, in a court of lies and poison, and let it happen. He had let this happen, let them exert their influence everywhere, denied Dorothea when she shoved the injustice in his face, fled with intentional ignorance away from the idea that it had always been his people. That the people in power did this in order to keep it. That was all.

It had never been anything more complicated than that, apart from a few party tricks and the dregs of some ancient magic wielded by people who scarcely cared about it.

He had been a fool.

He had believed that they could be better.

Dimitri took a breath, tried to speak, and found that he couldn’t. Something terrible was happening instead. Something useless and humiliating and pathetic.

Tears spilled down his face. He couldn’t stop them. His chest rose and fell and his breath stuck in his throat as he choked on a sob. His arms wrapped around his chest, but it didn’t help. He was standing there, in front of the nobles of nearly half of his kingdom, defeated and sobbing like a child at his loss.

“There is really no need for that,” Margrave Edmund said softly.

Dimitri could not respond. He lowered his head. Tears dripped onto the damp stone floor. There were no guards to fetch. The castle was filled with Edmund’s men. Probably more waited outside. Soldiers from Gautier, or even further. Soldiers from across the continent. They would kill him, kill Felix, kill Dedue in his bed, kill Ingrid when she returned.

“And to think that you let them crown this creature,” Marguerite Kleiman snorted.

Dimitri raised a hand to shield his face.

“Oh, _fuck_ this!”

The voice from beside him was unexpected, loud and furious after so much polite, hushed conversation. Dimitri’s head jerked up and he saw that Felix had stepped forward, blade drawn.

“Fuck all of this and all of you!” he shouted. “You go on about how this is for Faerghus when here you are, nothing but a cabal of _traitors_!”

“Traitors to our king,” Margrave Gautier said patiently, “patriots to our country. I expected nothing less from the son of Rodrigue Fraldarius. There was no man more blindly loyal to his idealism.”

“You speak my father’s name with your filthy traitor lips again and I cut them off,” Felix snarled. “This is a grab for power, plain and simple. No need to simper and pretend it is all for some lofty ideal. Either admit that you are greedy cowards who would rather see your people burn than lose a single coin from your coffers or just kill us in our beds like the dishonorable filth that you are!”

“The king’s attack dog,” Baroness Albrecht said, raising an eyebrow. “I see it is a fitting title.”

“Only to those who deserve to be attacked,” Felix smiled very nastily back.

Dimitri wiped at his face with shaking hands.

“Felix, please,” he tried to say, his voice breaking as he turned to plead with Gautier again. “At least let him go, please. Spare him.”

“Fraldarius will have a use yet,” Gautier said. “As will you. I am not a wasteful man. The blood of a Blaiddyd is a difficult thing to procure.”

“If you lay a finger on him, you will regret it,” Felix said, his voice rising again. He stepped in front of Dimitri, as if he could keep him safe with just his own body as a shield.

“You don’t deserve to speak to him. You don’t deserve a drop. He has bled enough for you already! He has worked and sacrificed and done everything he can to be better, to make this world better, and he has never asked for thanks! You spit in his face and he is your _savior_!” Felix was shouting now, strained and furious and shaking with emotion.

“Terrible weapons must be… reforged sometimes,” Margrave Edmund replied with a shrug.

“No!” Felix shouted as Edmund began to rise, leveling his sword out in front of him. “None of you deserve to even _look_ at Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd!”

“Felix—” Dimitri tried to say, despair making his voice into nothing but a pained moan.

Unexpectedly, Felix whirled around to face him. He placed his free hand on Dimitri’s cheek, smoothed away some of the tears with his thumb. He had that look in his golden eyes again, that overwhelming, terrifying look.

“I love you,” Felix said simply. “I love you, Dimitri. You have to know that. You have to understand. I never stopped. I should have said, I never stopped loving you. Because you’re… good. You’re better than all of this. And don’t you dare forget, don’t you _dare_ believe that this is your fault!”

Dimitri felt his tears abruptly stop. His ears seemed to be ringing.

Felix was staring up at him desperately. 

Dimitri forgot everything else for a moment.

“This is very touching,” Margrave Gautier broke the silence with a resigned sigh. “Someone knock them out, please?”

Felix turned and lobbed his sword directly at the Margrave’s heart.

That was the last thing that Dimitri recalled before a bolt of magic hit him directly between the shoulder blades and he collapsed onto the stone floor and knew nothing but darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the proverbial cat is out of the bag! also please be aware that next chapter will have some pretty big CWs :(


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: torture, needles, gore
> 
> If you need to skip the torture and the depictions of needles, it occurs between "He hardly believed his own words, but he had no other weapon right now" and "'You’ll have your chance soon enough,' Margrave Edmund said."

_“What may I do when my master feareth_

_But in the field with him to live and die?_

_For good is the life ending faithfully.”_

_\--Thomas Wyatt_

Surprisingly, Felix awoke.

At first, all that he was aware of was pain, sharp and insistent pain radiating down from the side of his head. He concentrated, tried to determine its cause or its origin.

His hair was wet. Blood, he surmised. He’d been hit on the side of the head. His wrists hurt too, although not as badly. He felt something cold around them, tugging as his weight pulled him forward. Chained to a wall, he realized. Slowly, images began to trickle back to his mind

He’d thrown his sword, he remembered, seen Margrave Gautier stagger, then someone from behind had clubbed him and he’d fallen. Dimitri had fallen as well. Dimitri…

Painfully, Felix opened his eyes and waited for a few seconds until they focused.

He was in another low-ceilinged chamber, although this one was better lit and larger. Pale greenish light gave the stone walls a sickly hue, except where it reflected from the bars of the many cages. He squinted at the cages closer. Some were occupied, filled with rats that squeaked and chattered as he stirred and shifted the links of the chains

And in another larger cell, lying senseless on the floor, was Dedue. Felix strained against the manacles around his wrists, feeling his shoulders twinge and his knees scrape against the cold floor. It was difficult to tell if he was breathing. The angle of his leg looked… wrong.

But he was behind bars, Felix reminded himself. They wouldn’t have thrown a corpse behind bars.

Across the room, Felix heard the sound of someone else stirring and looked up, although his stomach rolled as he moved his head too quickly. At the center of the room there was a stone platform, a sort of table. Spread across it was Dimitri, stripped down to his shirt and barely beginning to regain consciousness.

“Dimitri,” Felix whispered, trying to keep his voice low enough that no one would hear.

His mind churned. He needed a plan. He needed a way to get all three of them out of here before anyone realized they were awake. The Fraldarius Crest gave him strength, but never enough that he snapped steel, and if they were to get out of the manacles, he needed Dimitri awake. 

“Dimitri, wake up,” Felix whispered as urgently as he dared. “Please, you need to wake up.”

Dimitri made a weak sound in his throat. One arm jerked in its manacles as he tried to raise it. He was bound tightly, nearly immobilized while they’d left Felix the room to kneel.

“Felix?” Dimitri’s groggy voice finally replied. “Are you alright?”

“I’ve been better,” Felix whispered grimly. “You need to break the chains, okay? Before someone gets back, you have to get us free.”

“Why are we alive?” Dimitri asked, sounding foggy and in no good condition to be snapping the thick iron around his arms and legs. Felix tried to fight back his panic.

As he did, he heard the click of approaching footsteps and he sank down, letting the chains bear his weight. Feigning unconsciousness might be his only play now.

He kept one eye open a slit. It was mostly hidden behind his hair, which seemed to have come loose, although much of it was stiff and matted with his own drying blood. As the door opened, he saw two robed figures, each wearing a dark mage’s long avian mask. Close behind them was Margrave Edmund.

Good, Felix thought savagely. Not Gautier, at least. Maybe he had managed to kill the old bastard after all.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Margrave Edmund said. He sounded so… calm. Unmoved, as though he was here to present a court case rather than to torture a pair of captives. “That is unfortunate, but to be expected. It is easier to keep you still if you’re unconscious, but I cannot have anything polluting your bloodstream just yet.”

“What is this?” Dimitri asked, voice hoarse and grating in his throat.

“My associates here need to make a few extractions from you and Fraldarius before we are quite done with you. Crests are a precious resource, you see,” Margrave Edmund said, very business-like still as he gestured to one of the masked mages. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you that if you struggle, you will only be inflicting greater suffering upon each other.

“If you’re going to kill us anyways, why should it matter?” Dimitri asked bitterly.

“Very true,” Margrave Edmund said.

Felix saw that one of the mages had lifted Dimitri’s shirt and was wiping at the front of his hip bone with a cloth soaked in some sharp smelling liquid. Antiseptic, Felix thought.

“I’m afraid that shortly after this procedure, Carduel Castle will be burned by rebel extremists. My daughter and I will escape with our lives, but the king will be tragically found amid the rubble. The Lords Assembly will have no choice but to avenge you,” Edmund continued. 

“So why wouldn’t I struggle, then?” Dimitri said with a dull humor, although Felix could sense the fear beneath those words. The other of the two mages had gone to a long counter and was laying something out. Felix heard the slight whisper of metal against cloth.

“Because, I think that once I do this,” Margrave Edmund said, stepping suddenly to Felix and wrenching his head up by his bloodied hair. “You’ll begin to reconsider. A painless death is not to be underestimated.”

Felix felt something white hot press against the side of his neck and, against his will, he howled with pain. Tears sprung into his eyes and his jaw clenched and he shook against the restraints. Then the pain was abruptly gone. He gasped and shivered for a moment as Margrave Edmund stepped back, conjured lightning still crackling at his fingertips.

“Not quite so asleep as you seem, Fraldarius,” the man noted lightly. “I expected nothing less. Do you understand what I need from you now, Dimitri?”

Felix lifted his head, feeling blisters already breaking out on the side of his neck.

“That was nothing,” he slurred defiantly. “Dimitri, if you don’t struggle, I’m going to break off of this wall and come kill you myself.”

“I understand,” Dimitri said, ignoring him. “I understand.”

“Very good,” Margrave Edmund smiled slightly. His eyes flicked down to Dedue, still lying in a heap in one of the cages. “I’d threaten this one as well, but… his uses are more limited. No Crest to extract, although he will make a useful subject for experimentation. I’ve been going through quite a lot of animals, you see.”

“If you lay a finger on him, his wife is going to make you regret that you ever lived to experience such pain,” Felix snarled. “No one is going to believe your story. Sylvain will send you all to the deepest dungeon in Fhirdiad and you’ll stay there, starving, begging for light, until you forget your own name.”

He hardly believed his own words, but he had no other weapon right now. Dimitri had to fight. He had to get Dimitri to fight.

“Felix, try to remember that for what I’m about to do, a tongue is not required,” Margrave Edmund sighed. “Now Dimitri, this is going to hurt. If you move, it will hurt more. Try not to move.”

The mage turned from the table, holding what looked like an enormously thick, hollow needle. Felix saw Dimitri’s breathing quicken slightly.

“Don’t,” Felix said sharply, jerking at the chains around his wrist again. His heart was pounding and his breathing had started to come in shallow gasps. “Stop it.”

“It’s okay,” Dimitri said, turning his head until Felix could see the blue of his eye. He was smiling. “It’s okay, Felix, I’m okay. I’ve gone through worse, I promise, it’s okay, it’s okay—”

He broke off as the needle entered his flesh right over the bone of his hip. Felix heard a slight hiss of breath through his teeth. The needle sank deeper.

Dimitri spasmed involuntarily in restraints. The other mage moved to hold him down. The needle sank deeper.

Then he did scream.

“Stop it,” Felix shouted over the sound, feeling his Crest humming as the iron manacles dug into the skin of his arms. His knees scraped helplessly at the stone floor until he felt blood beginning to wet the stone. “Stop it! Dimitri! No!”

The scream seemed to last forever until, finally, the needle reemerged.

“It’s the moment when it enters the bone, I think, that is the worst,” Margrave Edmund remarked, conversationally. “An ingenious idea. Without our very fruitful arrangement, I suspect I would have wasted years drawing nothing but blood, never the marrow.”

One of the mages nodded silently. The other began wiping down the other side of Dimitri’s hip.

“Dimitri…” Felix moaned, tugging uselessly at the chain. “No, no, no, please, _please_ —”

“Don’t… don’t worry about me,” Dimitri mumbled back, “I’m alright. I’m alright, Felix, it’s just pain.”

“How very touching,” Margrave Edmund noted. “After the fourth extraction, I’m not sure you’ll be so confident.”

“You have to fight,” Felix insisted, although he heard his voice coming out choked and pathetic. “You have to get out, please, Dimitri, get out.”

Dimitri tried to smile at him. He shook his head slowly.

Then the mage returned with the next needle and he didn’t speak any further. He writhed against the restraints, whimpered, and then eventually gave in and cried out in agony. It echoed in the chamber. Felix screamed too, helpless to do anything else, struggling until he felt the tendons in his shoulder beginning to give out.

When the second needle emerged, Felix could do nothing but gasp tiny choked breaths.

“It’s alright,” Dimitri said again, but his voice sounded so small, so fragile.

“Don’t hurt him” Felix begged, reduced to that as he stared up at Margrave Edmund’s still, neutral face. “Use my blood instead, please.”

“You’ll have your chance soon enough,” Margrave Edmund said. “In fact, I’ve been promised one of your samples for my own use. An heir with a major Crest of Fraldarius will be… an unexpected blessing.”

As he said it, Felix heard the door hinges squeal slightly. He looked up through the curtain of his filthy hair. One of the mages stepped hastily in front of Dimitri.

“Father?” a timid voice asked from the doorway. Felix could see only a sliver of the young woman. Her face looked drawn, confused and worried.

“I told you to stay in your room,” Margrave Edmund said sharply, no longer pleasantly neutral, but now furious, crossing to block the door.

“I heard screaming…” the woman said softly, staring around as the rats chattered in their cages.

“Marianne!” Dimitri called out suddenly. “Marianne, please, it’s me! You must run for help, leave the castle! You must get out of here now!”

“Back to your room,” Margrave Edmund commanded, grabbing his daughter roughly by her upper arm and forcing her a step back. “I am in the midst of a surgery. This man is very ill and in need of immediate care.”

“What is happening here?” Marianne asked, sounding lost. “Why do you have…?”

“I will explain it to you later,” Margrave Edmund said, “return to your chambers and prepare to leave.”

“Marianne,” Dimitri pleaded, straining his head up as far as he could, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, but your father, he said he’d been testing this on animals…”

Marianne froze. Although her father shoved her back to the door, she did not move.

“What is he talking about?” Marianne asked, and Felix heard her beginning to breath high and panicked through her nose. “Father, what does he mean? All of these rats… what are you doing?”

“As I have explained to you before, there are things you do not understand. I am in the middle of a difficult medical procedure and the longer you remain here, the more dangerous it is for the patient,” Margrave Edmund said fiercely.

“You cannot believe him,” Dimitri said desperately, “Marianne, you have to remember. Dorte, he was healthy, right? Did they allow you to see his body?"

“This man is mad, Marianne,” Margrave Edmund spoke over Dimitri, squeezing down on Marianne’s wrist until she cried out. “His mind is fractured by delusion and I am doing all that I can to save him!”

“They didn’t…” Marianne said faintly, “they wouldn’t let me see the body. All of these rats, father, these poor rats, what have you done?”

“You know what he has done,” Dimitri pleaded. “Trust yourself. You know.”

Marianne looked up at her father. Her hand was shaking where he held it. Her brown eyes were swimming with tears that slowly spilled down her cheeks.

And then… then she opened her mouth. Bared her teeth. They were… sharp. Very sharp. Her eyes grew wider, pupils narrowing to slits, brown fading to auburn to red, deep blood red.

“Marianne…” Margrave Edmund said. He released his grip on her arm. “Marianne, keep ahold of yourself, this has nothing to do with old Dotty…”

“You killed him,” Marianne growled. Her voice sounded strange. It was low and guttural, spoken through a mouth with far, far too many teeth now. “You killed _Dorte_.”

“Marianne, you must remain calm!” Margrave Edmund said. His voice broke on the last word as he backed up into the bars of the cages. “Your curse, you must control it. Later I will explain everything!”

Marianne’s fingers were lengthening, the nails staining black, curling into claws. Even the two masked mages began to back up. One grabbed a scalpel from the table, as if he intended to stab her with it.

“Explain?” Marianne’s voice had become a hissing, inhuman thing. “Explain what? That it was a mistake? I’m sure it was. I’m sure you didn’t mean it because you never knew his _name_ , hardly cared which stall he was in, you never rode him, never fed him, never, never _never_ —”

Her words became nothing but a scream then and her shape… changed. Her body grew, spikes bursting through her skin and forming a ridge along her spine. Felix recoiled.

He did not get a good look at what happened next. All he heard was a roar, Margrave Edmund’s scream, and a wet, sticky sound as blood splattered across the floor and the Margrave abruptly went silent.

One of the mages tried to dash for the door, and a huge creature, covered in black scales, eyes burning like coals, caught him in its jaws and tore the man into pieces with a soggy crunch and a slippery tearing of flesh and organ. The other mage began to scream, crawling away into the corner, but the sound only seemed to attract the monster. It turned on him, face slathered in gore, and Felix could smell its breath, hot and putrid.

Oh Goddess, he thought, frozen and too terrified to move. He was going to die like this.

The creature lunged and Felix closed his eyes as he heard the other mage meet a messy end. Blood speckled against his face and he flinched.

“Shhh,” Dimitri’s voice came quietly from the center of the room once the shrieking had stopped. “Marianne?”

Felix opened his eyes. The beast was looming over the table, blood dripping from its fangs onto Dimitri’s face. Felix felt his chest seize.

“Marianne,” Dimitri addressed the monster again. “I know it’s still you. Shh, shh, it’s okay. It hurts, I know it hurts.”

A terrible gurgling howl bubbled up in the beast’s throat. Dimitri lay still, hardly even breathing, with those jaws inches from his throat.

“Thank you,” Dimitri said quietly, “thank you for saving me, Marianne.”

The beast suddenly jerked back. Its massive jaws snapped shut. Dimitri raised his head, looking like he was about to speak again.

The beast tore the door from its hinges and raced away up the stairs.

Felix stopped holding his breath and gasped a few times. His vision went foggy and dark for a second. Distantly, he heard the sound of metal being wrenched out of position and Dimitri panting with effort.

Felix looked up to see that he’d freed his arm, although his wrist was bleeding from where he’d scraped it through the remnants of the cuff. Dimitri leaned down into the mess of viscera that had once been Margrave Edmund and withdrew a ring of keys with one shaking hand.

“What…” Felix managed to speak at last. “What was that?”

“I am unsure,” Dimitri said shakily, blood-slick fingers fumbling as he unlocked the cuffs around his ankles. “But I do not think we have much time.”

Dimitri grunted as he swung his legs over the side of the table. There was blood dripping down his leg from where the needle had gone in and his knees buckled as he tried to stand. Instead, he lowered himself to the ground and crawled to Felix, unlocking one of his hands with another key.

They had taken the patch over his eye. Most of the scars on the right side of his face were hidden by his hair, but still. Still. Felix could not stop shaking with rage and fear.

Felix let his arms fall to his sides. His fingers were bloodless and numb and his muscles protested as he moved them. There were dark bruises already blooming on his forearms.

But as soon as his hands were free, he slumped forward, leaned against Dimitri for a second. He allowed himself a moment to feel the warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart still pounding in his chest. Alive, Felix thought, inhaling deeply as his weak fingers clenched in the back of his sweat-soaked shirt. They were still alive.

And Felix had told him that he was in love with him. Eventually, they were probably going to have to talk about that. Not yet, though. Not yet.

Dimitri took a deep breath and wrapped one arm around Felix as well.

“We need to move,” Felix said after a second. “You’re in no condition to fight your way out right now. Check the bodies, see If they have anything for healing. Neither of us will be able to carry Dedue in this state.”

Felix managed to sway to his feet and limped over to the cage where Dedue was still unconscious. His leg was definitely broken. Felix unlocked the door and started trying to drag him out. His head lolled and his breathing felt very shallow.

Drugged, Felix realized. Whatever they had avoided using on Dimitri in order to keep his blood… pure or something, they must have used on Dedue. Felix did his best not to shift his broken leg too badly as he moved him. As big as Dedue was, right now he suddenly seemed very delicate.

“Come on,” Felix muttered under his breath. “You can’t die yet. Who else is going to keep me in line?”

Dedue’s head sagged back against Felix’s shoulder as he slowly dragged him out.

“Here,” Dimitri said, painfully crawling back across the floor and holding out a stoppered vulnerary. “He should take it.”

“No,” Felix said with a grimace. “You need to use it, Dimitri. I can’t carry him, and even if it could heal his leg, he might not wake for hours.”

Dimitri tipped his head back and bared his teeth in frustration.

“Dimitri, we need you,” Felix said, pressing the bottle back towards him. “If you can’t walk, then we can’t get out of here. He needs you to drink that."

Dimitri obeyed and Felix watched as some of his discomfort seemed to lessen. There was still blood staining the front of his shirt, but slowly he managed to shift to his knees and then stand.

“Get something to brace his leg,” Felix said, gently lowering Dedue’s head to the stone floor and clawing his way back to standing. “I’m going to let some rats free before this place burns.”

Outside of the chamber, Felix found a pile of their clothes and he paused for a moment to allow Dimitri to dress in something other than a bloody shirt. His spaulder and sword had obviously been taken elsewhere. He would need to find some replacement.

It took both of them to hoist Dedue up the stairs. Distantly, Felix could hear screaming from higher up in the castle keep. He shuddered, eyes straying to the bloody pawprints on the steps.

“Get outside,” Felix said, although his jaw was clenched with pain. “I need to find a weapon. Keep hidden as best as you can.”

“Let me go with you,” Dimitri said, although he was already struggling with Dedue clutched in his arms.

“Go now,” Felix said brutally before he continued up the stairs.

They would have to fight their way past Edmund’s soldiers at the gates. And beyond that… well, Edmund had said that a group of rebels was supposedly coming to burn the place down. Who knew if that meant Dorothea or Edmund’s own soldiers dressed as bandits? The best he could hope for was that they could hide, remain unseen until the castle was ash and Felix could hail some passing messenger for help.

Felix staggered back up to the hall with his room. There was a howl from the floor above and the sound of claws scrabbling against the stone. Felix ignored it, stumbled along using the wall to move.

To his relief, they hadn’t moved his possessions yet. He fumbled around for his spare sword and dagger and the single elixir he usually wore in the reinforced pouch at the side of his belt. He drank down a dose of it, grimaced at the astringent tincture, and he felt the pain in his head lessen and his eyes refocus.

Then he fumbled under his bed, hoping that no one had yet had time to make a thorough search of his chamber. He had left the Sword of Moralta in Fraldarius territory with his uncle. It was an awkward blade in a fight. But wrapped in oiled cloth, hidden beneath his travelling cloak, he had brought a shield.

It was still there. Aegis glowed faintly at his touch as he drew it out. Felix strapped the shield to his arm and watched as the dark walls of the room reflected a warm gold. 

When he went to Dimitri’s room, Areadbhar was gone. Of course. The nobles would not risk losing a relic and the weapon wasn’t exactly easy to conceal. Felix grabbed what clothes he could find, Dimitri’s ceremonial side sword, and then bolted.

Before he could decide whether or not to attempt searching Dedue’s room for another vulnerary, he heard the sound of a horn outside. Felix cursed and fled back down the stairs. If Dimitri had been seen, they might just shoot him on sight.

But when he reached the doors of the keep and staggered out into the dim pre-dawn light of the courtyard, Felix saw that the gates were swinging closed, a metal grate lowering over them. He spotted Dimitri a moment later, crouched with Dedue behind the water barrels.

The Edmund knights were closing them in. They lined the ramparts, but they were still facing out, aiming at something beyond.

“What is going on?” the voice of Marguerite Kleiman called out and Felix leapt back into the shadow of the doors as she came marching around the side of the keep, flanked by a pair of soldiers. She was wearing blacked armor, spikes on her shoulders making her narrow frame imposing. “It is not yet dawn, it’s too early! We have to get the samples back to Myson if we’re going to—”

“My lady,” one of the soldiers said anxiously, “it is not the Gautier men yet. It is… it is Arnault.”

“What?” Marguerite Kleiman snarled.

As she said it, a massive chunk of flaming rock crashed through the iron grate that had been lowering over the entrance to the walls. A meteor, Felix realized.

Thunder clapped overhead. Felix gave Dimitri a wordless look.

And then finally, finally, it began to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a few more chapters left to go! thank you all so much for sticking with me :)


End file.
